


Fly Like An Eagle

by Slybrarian



Series: Always Bold [4]
Category: Generation Kill, Star Trek
Genre: Fake Marriage, M/M, Mission Fic, Polyamory, Space Exploration, Space Marines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slybrarian/pseuds/Slybrarian
Summary: Having survived the Dominion War, two of our heroes are assigned to a starship. Concerned about Brad's ability to survive without his constant supervision, Nate proposes a shocking solution. After that, there's some space adventures.Featuring: a marriage of administrative inconvenience, cultural anachronisms, Romulans, some fisting of a space-time hole, saccharine domesticity, and a double-crossover reacharound because the author couldn't be bothered to create an OC science duo.
Relationships: Brad Colbert/Nate Fick/Ray Person, Nate Fick/Ray Person
Series: Always Bold [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1498538
Comments: 26
Kudos: 64





	1. Into the Future

**San Francisco, Earth  
Stardate 53190 - Three months after the Dominion War**

Stepping into Starfleet headquarters felt strange for many reasons. Wearing a full standard uniform instead of utility kit like a regular officer was one. Civilians were walking around everywhere, even inside the perimeter of the facility. Then of course there was the fact that he was at a repurposed community center, not the age-old center on the Presidio, because the actual headquarters building was still a pile of rubble waiting for reconstruction.

It seemed kind of silly to Nate. It wasn't as if he'd ever visited before. How was he supposed to know what was strange and what was normal? But that was the problem he'd been having for a while with a lot of things.

"Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick," he said at the reception desk. An Andorian petty officer in command red looked up at him. "I have an appointment with Admiral Soltani."

"Yes, sir," replied the rating. She gestured toward an archway between the reception desk and the lift lobby behind it. "Step into the security scanner, please."

He walked ahead and waited as lights washed over him. There was a long pause after the machine stopped. "Problem, petty officer?"

"I need you to check your weapons, sir," she replied, pulling a tray from under the desk and handing it over. She watched as he placed his main phaser, backup cricket unit, and belt knife into it. After sliding it back into a safe she handed him a chit. "Thank you, sir. Second lift on your right, you want level seventeen."

"Have a nice day," Nate said, walking away. He was halfway to the lift before he remembered the polyceramic blade tucked away in his boot, which was apparently as invisible to Starfleet's sensors as to the Dominion's. Maybe he'd mention that on the way out. 

"Good afternoon, lieutenant," the admiral's cephalopodic yeoman burbled as he entered the antechamber of her office. Their glistening skin was a healthy turquoise this afternoon. They raised one arm in greeting while six others continued to type; the last was about half its normal length, still regrowing after it had been lost during the battle over Chintoka.

"Afternoon, Gelph'flp."

"The admiral will be with you in a few minutes. She's currently finishing up with an officer from Starfleet Operations. Please take a seat."

Before Nate could do so, the door leading further inside hissed open. "- back until you can give me a fucking answer instead of mealy-mouthed platitudes!" a woman inside shouted.

A Tellarite captain in gold came rushing out and headed straight for the exit. Gelph'flp's eyes swivelled to follow the captain, then back to Nate. "It appears she can see you early."

"Thanks. I think." He walked into the lion's den.

Vice Admiral Soltani was sitting behind a wide teak desk. A long braid trailed down her back, grey at the roots. She was a woman of Iranian descent, old enough to be his grandmother, and her voice had a distinct gravelly texture. 

"Ah, Nate, so good to see you again," Soltani said, standing up and coming around her desk to give him a firm handshake. "I hope you're well."

"Better than the last time we met."

"Aren't we all? Please, sit." She gestured to a pair of armchairs positioned near the office's floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked out on the Bay. Positioned between them was a small coffee table piled with PADDs and no few printed flimsies. "You're coming off leave, yes? You did actually take it rather than try to be productive?"

"Yes, ma'am. I spent most of the last month visiting with family." More or less, anyways. He'd quickly discovered that staying in his childhood bedroom - since converted to a nursery for visiting grandchildren but with a fold-out couch bed - was suffocating. He'd moved into Brad's spare room with Ray after a week and commuted to see his parents and siblings. 

"Good. I'm not scheduled to start my own for a few more weeks, but at least I'm back on Earth and working a regular schedule. I can actually see my husband on nights and grandchildren on the weekend." Soltani started shuffling through the PADDs on the table until finding one she wanted. "I called you here to talk about your future with Starfleet. With the war over, there's a lot of changes coming, and I'd like to see you make the most of your opportunities."

"To be honest, ma'am, I've been thinking of taking a sabbatical."

"Educational leave for a graduate program?"

"Something like that, ma'am."

"Captain Patterson mentioned as much. I must admit, I'm surprised. You and your company played a key role in the success of dozens of operations, both as part of Recon and while on detached special assignment, and much of that was because of your work. You've got a rare talent for leadership."

"I am assured of this, ma'am. But it's not what I signed up for."

"None of us signed up for total war, Lieutenant. But the defense of the Federation has always been a key part of Starfleet's mission, even if it's not our day-to-day focus. A Starfleet Ranger knows that better than most."

"And I've done my part. It's time to step back and consider what I want my future to look like."

She waited for him to say more, but he remained silent. Eventually she sighed. "I'm afraid Starfleet will not be placing you out to pasture just yet, Lt. Fick."

"Ma'am? I wasn't aware that was an option. My contracted term's up in a matter of months."

"That's true, and under normal circumstances once it was over you'd be free to leave even if we wanted to keep you. However, the Federation remains under a state of emergency and until that lapses we can keep you as long as it's in the interest of the service."

"I see." Nate wanted to yell. Yelling was unproductive and, as Brad would tell him with a sly smile, illogical under these circumstances, so he didn't. "I'd like to think that I'd earned a little bit of leeway from you, ma'am."

"Do you think I make time in my day for career counselling for every lieutenant?" she scoffed. "If it were up to me, I'd sign your sabbatical application today. But I'm not the only admiral in Starfleet, and Personnel has slots to fill. The fact of the matter is that you've got a lot of people ahead of you on the the demobilization list - injured, reservists, those with more time in service."

Nate wasn't entirely sure he believed that. There were plenty of other senior-grade lieutenants out there. Maybe if he pushed she'd pull the strings anyway. But before he made a scene, he needed more information. "What are my options, then?"

"What _they_ want is to take an infantry officer with Cardassian and Klingon language expertise and put him in the occupation zone in a peacekeeping role. Or a lateral transfer into Special Missions, since that's what you've been mostly doing the last two years." Soltani saw his grimace and nodded. "I didn't think that'd been appealing."

"I lost a lot of people, ma'am, especially on Betazed. I'm not sure I'm still suitable for that sort of combat position."

"The occupation assignment is mostly playing police officer, but I understand why it might bring up bad memories. I have two other possibilities in mind." Soltani handed over the PADD in her hand. "The first position is a teaching slot here on Earth. Rebuilding Recon and other specialized security units is a high priority. I think you would do well as an instructor. Most likely you'd be based out of Ranger School in Aberdeen."

Nate's first reaction was that teaching seemed better than peacekeeping duty, but only marginally so. "And the other?"

"Chief of security aboard the starship _Zephyr_. She's a new Dragon-class cruiser, five hundred crew under Captain Yang Mei-li. She'll be assigned around the spin-core border, between Cardassia and the Klingons. The primary mission is to aid in recovery efforts, protect against raiders taking advantage of the chaos, and continue surveying the frontier in that area. A first responder and troubleshooter, essentially."

"Sounds like same shit, different ship," Nate said, raising an eyebrow. "I might as well be on occupation duty."

"It's a starship, you ungrateful fucker, and it won't be on that assignment for long." Soltani threw up her hands dramatically. "I treat you like the son I never had, and this is how you repay me?"

Nate glanced at the pictures of her family. "Does Armin know you tell people things like that?"

"Yes, and he whines incessantly about it. You see, you have so much in common you're practically brothers." She pointed an accusing finger at him. "And don't give me some ExComm bullshit about not wanting to do more than shoot things, because I've read your original officer candidate application."

Nate grinned for a few moments, before the levity started to fade away. "I do appreciate the offer, ma'am, although I'm not sure I'm qualified. My space combat experience consists of being flown around as cargo or running for the escape pods."

"There's a refresher course. You'll have time to prepare before the ship leaves Sol system."

He reluctantly tapped over the position description on the PADD. He'd joined Recon for the challenge it offered, but a ship had been the original goal. It had been a dream for so long it was hard to think of it as reality, not after two years of fire and nightmares made flesh. It wasn't just him his decisions affected anymore, either.

"I'll admit, there's pros and cons to both positions," Soltani continued. "If you truly need to relax a little, the teaching job's as good as you can get despite having to deal with countless insufferable little shits. The ship, well, it's a career fast track. You'd be looking at lieutenant commander by the end of the year, then an XO position in three or four years. You could be a captain by thirty-five."

"I'm not James Kirk or Tyrla Scott," Nate said with a little huff of laughter while paging through ship's information. "I'll need a couple days to think it over."

"And talk it over, no doubt. How is Warrant Officer Person? Recovering well, I hope."

Nate looked up again, startled. "Yes. Thank you for asking. He's been keeping busy with classes."

"With high marks, as I understand. I took the liberty of choosing positions where there are complementary ones available for an infowar expert, on the assumption that your little fling was going to continue."

"That's very considerate. Honestly, we haven't had a lot of time to talk about next steps."

"Take the time," she said, an uncharacteristic amount of gentleness in her voice. "Bonds forged in war are tricky things. Sometimes they last a lifetime, and sometimes they fall apart when no longer under tension. Be thoughtful. Be deliberate." 

"I'll take that under advisement, ma'am."

"Go on then, get the fuck out of my office. And try to get me an answer quickly."

"Yes, ma'am."

The meeting had been scheduled for late in the afternoon, so Nate decided to stop by the market on the way home. He picked up what he was fairly certain was everything he would need for some genuine homemade pan-fried salmon. If not, well, maybe they'd see if certain people really could taste the difference between fresh and replicated ingredients. He snagged a strawberry cheesecake as well.

He caught a commuter air tram out of the city. It dropped him off a few dozen kilometers north of San Francisco, at a modest two-bedroom ranch home. It was Brad's, although more in name than practice given that he hadn't been around to use it regularly for years. Ray had been staying there alone for six months, something obvious once you saw the decor. Brad's ire had been matched only by his happiness at seeing Ray in the flesh again.

Ray wasn't there when Nate went inside, or so he thought at first. While putting the groceries in the kitchen, Nate spotted him sitting out on the back porch. He had a computer set up on the picnic table and was alternating between typing on that and referencing several PADDs haphazardly scattered around. He was shirtless, of course, although the fact that he looked tan and not like a boiled lobster suggested he'd used sun protection for once, and he was bobbing his head to something just barely audible on his headphones. Nate eased the back door open and started to slowly creep up behind him.

"You're not actually being sneaky, you know," Ray called without looking away from his materials.

"Just testing your senses," Nate said, pulling off the headphones before pressing a kiss to the back of his head. "We don't want you getting soft."

"Soft," Ray repeated. "While you were off visiting your sister and Grand Admiral Doom-and-Gloom, I was being screamed at by a sadistic therapist, taking my subspace mechanics final, and sitting in a tactics seminar with a bunch of cadets who are sad that the war ended a few months before they could get blown to pieces."

"Sounds tough," Nate said. He sat down next to Ray and picked up one of the PADDs.

"You have no idea. I'm not sure what's worse: that the little shits are exactly the sort of gung-ho rah-rah motto-spouting bullshit fountains that I was at that age, or that Professor sh'Annev keeps making me lead discussions in the hopes that maybe they'll pay more attention to me than her when we try to tell them war's fun until half your body's got shrapnel in it."

Nate winced and gave Ray's shoulder a sympathetic rub. That was precisely why they'd spent six months separated and only able to see each other over the comms, when those were actually available. Their luck had finally run out during a snatch-and-grab op, not even on the mission itself but during the extraction when their ship had taken fire. Ray had been too close to an exploding bulkhead when a torpedo got through the shields, leaving him missing an eye, an arm, and a lot of burned skin. He looked fine to a casual observer now, but at the time it'd been terrifying, and the doctors had sent him straight back to Earth for care rather than even trying in one of the fleet's medical ships.

"I'm sure those future officers are thrilled to hear your wisdom about," Nate paused and frowned at the PADD, "comparative counter-cultural music trends?"

"That's for an entirely different class."

"I thought you were taking just three, now that astro-nav's finished." Even now that they could finally see each other every day - not to mention every night - Nate was still having trouble keeping track of what Ray was up to between compressed Academy courses, physical therapy, band practice, and mandatory appearances in Missouri for a dizzying array of family functions. For a man who'd just had his last surgery a month before he was pretty busy. 

"Three real classes, sure, but my advisor said I needed some cultural mumbo-jumbo that wasn't about machines or killing."

They both turned at the sound of a loud hum from the other side of the house. It cut off and a minute later the side gate swung open. Brad walked his motorcycle through and back to the small shed he stored it in. He was wearing a colorful floral tank-top and swim trunks, both gifts from Ray and also both wet and clingy in an eye-pleasing way, and a more practical black crash helmet. 

He walked over to the picnic table and sat the helmet down. He gave Ray a little nod and said to Nate, "I see you managed to get home safely once again."

"Back home safely?" Nate repeated, bemused. "Brad, I'm trained to survive in some of the most hazardous environments of the galaxy."

"Dangerous planet, Earth," Brad said. "I've never trusted it."

"Come on, Brad," Ray replied. "It's not all as terrible as Missouri."

"I've been in Orion whorehouses safer than your radioactive excuse for a province."

"Surf lessons with the niece go well?" Nate asked. 

"Of course. Unlike some inbred imbeciles, my family line actually has more than rudimentary levels of coordination."

"You're adopted, you arrogant shithead!" Ray hollered. 

"Ray, come help me make dinner," Nate said, standing up. "We can get it finished while he takes a shower."

"I hope that's not a euphemism for doing something disgusting in my kitchen."

"It is now," Ray said. "Come on, LT, let's go defile the counter."

"I'm not sure we can manage that," Nate said, deliberately loud enough for Brad to hear even as they walked inside, "but the table's at a pretty convenient height."

"You can't defile something twice."

Ray managed to let Nate take the lead on cooking for about two minutes, before he shoved him aside and set him to chopping up and sauteing vegetables instead. Nate's cooking skills had always been somewhat limited; his parents hadn't done more than the basics while he was growing up, relying on a replicator instead, and his years in Starfleet hadn't left him much time or inclination to expand on that. Ray had been doing it practically all his life and it showed. He'd been trying the past month to teach Nate a few tricks, but it had been slow going because Ray was both impatient and apparently incapable of relaying instructions that involved actual measurements. The ones he did have tended to be measured in esoteric terms like pinches, splashes, and ounces.

Also, once they'd gotten distracted defiling the table and set the stove on fire.

Dinner turned out well and on time. They spent much of it listening to Brad boast of the athletic prowess of a six-year-old, and to Ray bemoan the future of the Federation's finest. Nate was mostly silent, happy to let them carry the bulk of the conversation.

"Far be it for me to be suspicious of dessert," Brad said once they were finished eating and half the cheesecake had been devoured, "but am I right in thinking your meeting with the admiral didn't go well?"

"That obvious?" Nate asked wryly.

"Pretty much."

"It's not bad, per se, just not what I hoped for." Nate shrugged. "No sabbatical for me. Starfleet has me at the bottom of the demob queue, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Regulation 13982?"

"Yeah, one of the 13-98s," Nate said, racking his brain to remember which one that even was. One of the reserve reactivation or conscription clauses, the sort of thing skimmed over in legal training because no one ever used it. "She gave me two offers I couldn't refuse. First one's teaching baby rangers."

"I suppose England's not that bad," Ray said after a few moments.

Brad sighed. "Scotland, Ray. How many times do you have to narrowly avoid an asskicking to learn?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. He wouldn't have to actually live on that part of the island. He could commute from anywhere in Europe."

"You could do worse than trying to impart wisdom on snot-nosed brats," Brad said. "Reliable work hours. Comfortable climate. Regular trips on- and off-world for training, but on a scheduled basis."

"That's all true," Ray agreed, "but can you imagine the sort of crazy fucks who want to go commando after all this Dominion shit? Nothing but psycho killers for years."

"Sounds like they could use a responsible adult." Brad smirked every so slightly. "Assuming they'd believe he is one."

"You should have let Doc leave a scar from that bayonet hit," Ray said. "People respect a good scar."

"I can't agree. Ruining that skin would be a crime."

Involuntarily, Nate glanced over at Ray. It wasn't obvious, but if you got up close you could spot the slight difference in eye color. The separation line on his left shoulder had long since faded under his tan, but one of his tattoos abruptly ended. "I liked you guys better when you at least pretended to respect officers."

"I think," Brad said, "that you're wearing rose-colored glasses about your early interactions with Ray. What's the alternative assignment?"

"Ship duty." Nate handed the PADD over.

"Department head on a starship," Brad said with a low whistle as he scrolled through the posting. "Not an old clunker, either, straight off the assembly line."

"Try not to drool on the equipment."

"I know upstanding officers in our peace-loving fleet would never kill each other over a position," Brad continued, "but they might maim someone for this one."

Ray reached across the table to snatch the PADD out of Brad's hands. "So do you want to take it?

"I don't know," Nate replied.

"You don't know?" Ray repeated. "Your entire thing is knowing what to do, LT. What will us poor enlisted men do without your wisdom and guidance?"

"Fine. I know what I want, but I want more than one thing and I don't know if they fit together."

"That sounds ominous," Brad said, glancing between Nate and Ray, who was frozen still like a rabbit that had just noticed a salivating fox.

"We haven't had a lot of time to talk about the future," Nate started.

"Is this a break-up dinner?" Ray demanded. 

"What? No," Nate replied. "Why would that even be a thing?"

"It does seem like something you'd do," Brad said. "The dinner, not necessarily breaking up with him."

Nate shot Brad a 'you're not helping' look, something often employed around Ray, because Brad's ability to be subtly caring was matched only by his ability to stir shit up. "What I was trying to say is that we need to actually sit down and think about what comes next. We can't rely on a plan of surviving the next mission and then fucking like crazy while on leave when the next mission might last years."

"It's worked so far," Ray said, settling down a little. 

"You're basically done with PT, right? They tell you whether or not you'll be returning to duty?"

Ray shook his head. "They've been talking like I'll be fine for regular service, but it might be a lot longer before I can pass infantry tests again."

"What about school?"

"The classes are mostly just something to do when I'm not being harassed by Tellarite slave drivers pretending to be nurses. Honestly, I haven't really got any ideas about what to do next."

"The admiral suggested that there's space for you on the _Zephyr_ , if you want it."

"The ship's based out of DS9," Brad pointed out. "Bajor's a pretty nice world these days. Good universities, pleasant people, some great beaches. You could get out of the service and finish up a degree there." 

"Because I'm definitely going to do the dependent thing," Ray scoffed. "Maybe I can join one of the service spouse groups, throw a few gametes into an exowomb, and see how many screaming brats I can greet Nate with when he gets leave. Sounds fun for everyone."

"They'll probably be letting skilled civvies back on ships again anytime now."

"That sounds even worse. All the danger and inconvenience, without being allowed to carry around a weapon." Ray shook his head. "Nah. If our intrepid leader's betraying the force and switching to regular Fleet, there's no shame in me doing it."

"I can't ask you to stay in just for my sake," Nate said. There was no question about Brad; he'd never had any doubts about continuing his career. Ray had been much more ambivalent during those quiet moments when they were away from the fighting. "The teaching job would be fine, and give you time to figure things out."

"Yeah, well, fuck fine," Ray said without any heat. "I might occasionally slack off and be mediocre, but you weren't meant for just 'fine'."

"Ray," Nate said, only to be cut off before he could even figure out what to add.

"This is a good opportunity for you," Ray said. "And since I'm not letting you leave me behind or turn it down, you can just keep quiet about whatever your next objection is. I dragged your bleeding ass halfway across Torros III, I think I can cope with a climate-controlled starship."

"Halfway?" Brad said with a tone so dry it helped suck up the building tension. "The distance seems to increase every time you bring this up."

"Why the hell is he in this conversation?" Ray asked. "We're trying to have a heart-to-heart and he's just nitpicking."

"Because this skips the step where we both go looking for advice from our friend and it turns into some kind of fucked-up comedy of miscommunication," Nate said.

"Thank you for sparing me that," Brad said. "And in the interest of sparing me more of your mutual attempts to out-sacrifice each other, can you just acknowledge that he's more stubborn than you?"

"Fine. Ship duty it is, assuming you're cleared for it." Nate couldn't blame Ray for wanting to stick together; the part of Nate that wanted him safe on Earth was eclipsed by the part that wanted him close at hand. Lose enough people and you clung to the ones you saved all the harder, objectivity be damned. 

That just left one other problem. Ray might be the person he was sleeping with, but he wasn't the only person Nate had trouble imagining a future without. "Brad, have you heard anything from Personnel about your own next assignment?"

Brad inexplicably looked surprised that the conversation had taken this turn. "Me? Nothing solid. My guess would be staying on with First Recon as a company sergeant, although there's been some talk shuffling some of us to other battalions or instructor positions at Recon School."

Nate had to replay that mentally just to be sure he'd parsed it correctly. "You didn't think that last was relevant?"

"To what you two decide? Not really. The same argument Ray made still applies: you'd be wasted sitting around Aberdeen."

"And you wouldn't?"

"I understand many people have trouble remembering their advanced training, sir, but it's the sergeants who do all the real work of turning people into soldiers."

Nate remember his standard Ranger and advanced Recon training all perfectly well, aside from a few parts of the escape and evasion course, and admittedly the practical courses with the sergeant instructors had featured much more prominently than the class time with officers. 

"I'm certain you'd be invaluable wherever you are assigned," Nate said, pausing briefly to choose his words, "but we've had a good thing going. Your advice in the field and your friendship out of it has been one of the few things I've been able to rely on. I'd like to try to keep this team together."

"I'd like that too, but it's not up to us," Brad said. "How would it even work? I'd have to switch to regular Fleet, for one thing."

"If they're just filling department head slots, there's no way the senior NCOs are chosen yet. I realize that serving on a starship might offend your warrior spirit, but just think of it as a new challenge to overcome." 

"Come on, Brad," Ray said. "Join us as Fleeties. We've got replicators instead of ratpacks."

Brad gave him a skeptical frown. "If I'd asked you yesterday, you'd have said you despise Fleeties."

"Nah, I've been hanging out with a bunch from my classes, they're okay people," Ray said. "I mean, soft, weak, and naive people, but nice. What they really need is a big, strong master sergeant who can toughen them up and teach their inexperienced asses how to handle a large weapon."

"That sounds like a fucking nightmare," Brad said, trying not to smile. What got through anyway faded after a few seconds. "I'm not objecting personally, I just don't think there's any chance of a transfer request going through."

"How's that?" Nate asked. "I'm leaving, why not you?"

"I don't want to downplay your importance, Nate," Brad said, "but lieutenants come and go. Senior NCOs are a lot more valuable, especially in units like Recon. They might take my desires into consideration, but ultimately the Fleet will put me where I'm needed, and they're not going to approve a transfer into Explorer Corps or regular fleet or whatever just because I want to stay at your side. There's too many SNCO slots that need filled and not enough people qualified for them. The way I hear, they're practically begging Wynn to come back just for a staff position, and he's in even worse shape than this broken-boned idiot."

"He's got you there," Ray said with a sigh. "If anything, Command will figure separating us will just make him more angry and murderous. His combat efficiency will be through the roof."

"At my side," Nate mused. Brad's earlier mention of regulations had dislodged something deep in his brain, and now it was starting to come into focus. "You know, there are ways to guarantee a specific joint posting."

"Sure," Ray said. "I think traditionally those involve blackmail, bribery, or getting a planet to declare that you're the emissary of the Prophets."

"Those might work, but spousal privileges are probably easier to arrange than divine intervention."

You'd think that Nate had just set off an antimatter bomb. Brad looked bemused at first, until he realized that Nate was serious and his Vulcan training critically failed, leaving him utterly gobsmacked. Ray's mouth was hanging open, surprise slowly replaced by glee as he saw just how off-kilter Brad had been left.

"Are you fucking proposing to him," Ray demanded, "just minutes after I declared that I'd throw my entire life away and follow you across the galaxy? I am shocked and appalled by this betrayal." Also, by his tone, extremely amused. 

"No, of course not," Nate said. Brad relaxed slightly. "Obviously it'd have to be all three of us."

Ray started to laugh, little chuckles at first but swiftly working his way up to a loud cackle. Some people might call it howling with laughter, but Nate had actually heard that from species that could howl and it was distinctly different. Slipping off his chair and literally rolling on the deck laughing seemed a bit much even for Ray, but then he'd always had a flair for dramatic hyperbole. The theatrics did give Brad some time to regain his composure, after a fair amount of scowling first.

"I will," Ray gasped out after a minute. "I absolutely will, your crazy motherfucker."

"Perhaps you'd like to explain your reasoning, sir," Brad said in the exceptionally calm and level tone he broke out when he thought Nate was being a complete idiot, but couldn't quite bring himself to actually say it like he would when speaking about other officers.

"Serving with spouses or other family is a long tradition, pre-dating the modern Federation Starfleet," Nate said. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense as a solution. "It was quite common in the Imperial Guard, for example. It's why I can screw Ray and only have to face a bunch of paperwork and counselling sessions rather than a court-martial."

"You can't just pretend we're Andorians," Brad protested. 

"He's right, that's cultural appropriation, and the anthropology class I'm taking tells me that's a bad thing," Ray said from the deck. "Besides, you need four people for a traditional Andorian marriage, and there's no way I can talk Walt into getting hitched."

"I can't believe he's the one making sense."

"On the other hand, we are adopted members of House Mo'kai, and Klingons have this entire thing about warrior marriages for guys who like to fuck guys. We should probably skip the part where we get hit by pains sticks, on account of my medical issues."

Brad glared down. "Ray, get up here and talk to us like a normal person."

"Okay. Come on, give me a hand, I'm a cripple, remember?" Brad tried to ignore Ray's outstretched arm, but as usual relented and offered his assistance.

"A regular Californian marriage down at the justice of the peace would work, although the Klingon thing might add verisimilitude," Nate said. "Or at least keep public notice out of the eyes of prying relatives. The legal certificate's what the Office of Personnel Management has to obey."

"I have been roped into a lot of crazy plans and missions since I started serving with you two, and this," Brad hesitated. "Doesn't actually hit the top ten, but it should. Walk me through how you see this working so I can tell you how wrong you are."

"We get married, file a CS-248 form asking for joint postings, and we all end up on the same ship. Simple."

"Really simple," Ray agreed, "not the kind that ends up with us getting shot at."

"Somehow I doubt you need a third wheel hanging around when you're screwing," Brad said, "to say nothing about how this would cramp my own sex life."

Ray and Nate exchanged an incredulous look. Nate didn't understand how Brad had continuously failed to notice that Ray wanted to climb him like a jungle gym, and he'd given up trying long ago. 

"Says who? Just because we get married doesn't mean it has to be exclusive," Nate pointed out. "Or involve sex between us. What happens in our quarters is our business. If it doesn't work out, you get divorced."

"Nate, hey, listen. Maybe we should just give him some space. This is a big decision," Ray said. It was a very reasonable thing to say, which meant there was a sixty-sixty chance of whether what came next was sincere or joking. The extra percentage was for the times of overlap. "Brad's been very down on the idea of marriage ever since he realized that he was never going to just get assigned a spouse by a spooky Vulcan mystic. He had his heart set on this big romantic fairy-tale where he'd get betrothed to a princess and then fuck her precisely once every seven years, and it completely ruined him for how normal people - even normal Vulcans! - actually interact with the concept."

"Ray," Brad growled.

"You'd think having human parents in a blandly whitebread two-person, exclusive, rabbi-sanctioned marriage would have kept his expectations at a rational level, but that's not how Brad's brain works."

"Ray! That is not the problem."

"Look, you can't have it both ways. Either traditional marriage is important, in which case we should find some other family-forming custom from the thousands out there in the Federation, or it's not important and we should take the tram to city hall and get this thing in gear first thing in the morning."

"Brad," Nate said, "please don't say yes just to spite Ray."

"Please do," Ray said. "It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. In fact, I dare you to marry us."

Nate was starting to feel like maybe he should have thought this through a bit more, and in particular taken into account the fact that not even Brad was immune to the siren call of "I triple-dog dare you." It was a known problem of using them as a sounding board to sanity-check his plans; sometimes instead of being the crazy angel and sane angels on his shoulder, they were crazy and aggressively bold. 

"I'm not saying yes out of spite," Brad said, the lying fucker, "I'm saying it because it's a sound and logical way to achieve our end goal. Let's do this thing."

That was apparently that as far as they were concerned. Late that night, Nate was still thinking about it, even while curled up in bed against Ray's back and enjoying the afterglow. That was the problem with Nate's brain sometimes; it just didn't know when to quit.

"Hey, Ray?"

He stirred in Nate's arms. "Hmmmm?"

"This is okay with you, right?"

"Was I not enthusiastic enough about your cock?" Nate waited silently for Ray to continue. "Yeah. I said yes, didn't I?"

"Sometimes you have trouble saying no."

Ray squirmed in his arms until they were face to face. "You don't have a lot of room to talk."

"How's that?"

"You came up with an on-the-fly tactically sound plan, without stopping to think about your own poor, abused romantic heart."

"I don't follow."

"Come on, you're the one for romantic gestures in this relationship. Are you really telling me you planned on a marriage of administrative convenience?"

"You baked us a one-year anniversary cake using ground-up chocolate meal bar, eggs from a lizard, and a metal box heated with a phaser," Nate pointed out. It had been absolutely revolting and one of the most touching things someone had ever done for him.

"I did it because knew your sappy ass would get a kick out of it."

Nate grinned. "And you only cared about that because you thought it'd get you laid?"

"See? I'm a very simple person with very simple motivations. Also, you're avoiding my point."

"It's not ideal, no," Nate admitted. "But it's not important, either. The substance is what matters. The commitment to a long-term relationship."

"I'd like that too, so stop worrying and let me sleep." There were a few minutes of silence, then Ray said, "I can feel you worrying."

"You don't mind Brad being involved?"

"I thought he was the point of our rushed nuptials, unless this is the most obtuse way of proposing ever. Which wouldn't be out of character for us, but usually the batshit stuff originates with me, not you."

"I'm just saying there's a difference between having him around while on duty and cohabitating long-term."

"Homes, we are literally living in his house right now. Let's face it, the awkwardness shuttle left the bay a long time ago. And if you're worried I can't keep my hands off him, Pastor Karen always had this saying about sticks and logs in people's eyes."

"You have my absolute trust, Ray, although I don't think that's quite how the saying goes."

"I don't think that's a denial."

Nate chuckled. At least they were on the same page in that regard. Well. They'd survived this long without incident, and it was hardly as if they were suffering from blue balls.

The next morning, Brad dragged them out of bed immediately after he returned from his run. Nate should have been surprised that he'd already located the most convenient municipal office and gotten the bulk of the paperwork filled out, but it was Brad, so he wasn't. At 0800 sharp, they and their drafted witness were at the Santa Rosa city hall. Apparently for members of Starfleet, there was no waiting period for people to reconsider possibly ill-advised hasty wedding plans.

"Yeah, we've been getting a lot of folks like you," said the clerk, a bored-looking woman about the same age as Nate's grandma. "People have to get things taken care of fast, on account of the war. Let's see, which of you is Joshua Ray Person?"

"That'd be me."

"Sign here, then repeat after me." Several signatures, thumbprints, and affirmations later, it was over with. "By the authority granted to me by the Republic of California and the United Earth Government, I hereby pronounce you spouses. Congratulations."

"Thank you, ma'am," Nate said to the clerk. 

"You all stay safe out in space. Next!"

There was a slow clap from their hastily-recruited best man.

"You guys are fucking insane," Hasser said, "and I say that as a man who did an orbital skydive."

"Thank you for standing witness, Staff Sergeant," Nate said, as bland and polite as he could manage. 

"Honestly, sir, I always thought you were smarter than this. You too, Brad. And Ray, well, I feel like I don't even know you anymore. Bad enough to take a promotion to warrant officer, and exploit the LT's weakness for charity cases, but now you've gone and done something to Brad."

"If that's going to be your attitude," Ray said, "you're not invited to the reception."

"Brunch isn't a reception. Have any of you told your parents?"

"Definitely not invited."


	2. To the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroes get on a boat. Special guest stars Fitz and Simmons.

**USS Zephyr, Earth-Luna L5 Point**  
Stardate 53238

"I'll say this about your sugar-granny," Ray said with a low whistle. "When she comes through, she comes through."

He was flying a shuttle up with Nate to meet their new ship, which was parked too far out from Earth to be reached by transporter. Some people might call that really inconvenient, but to Ray it seemed like a nice way to start off their grand starship adventures. It was how captains arrived, after all, and they were probably as important. 

_Zephyr_ was a squat, muscular ship, but larger than it looked at first glance. It had the classic saucer section, but instead of a full engineering section it just had a short elliptical belly that merged with the main hull and an aft superstructure that held the impulse engines and main shuttlebay. Twin nacelles sat at the ends of downward-curving pylons, and above the hull was a weapons pod. It all gleamed with a fresh, silvery gray coat of paint.

"Technically, isn't she your sugar-granny in law?" Nate replied.

Ray grinned at him, and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Guess that's true, snookums. No? Don't like that one?"

He'd been steadily working his way through every sappy epithet he could some up with. It had only taken one and a half days to get through synonyms and translations of 'husband', which was perfectly cromulent in Vulcan but apparently a bit too formal for Nate's taste. In fact, he'd been skeptical of pretty much all of them, although 'sexy beast' had produced interesting results. 

"I'm not going to react to your trolling," Nate said mildly. That was in itself a reaction, which meant Ray filed it away along with everything else that had ever managed to produce a smile or laugh, to be saved for when one was needed. 

"All I'm saying is that I can't just keep calling you LT. People are going to think it's either weird or kinky."

"They wouldn't be wrong."

"Hey, you want me to let my freak flag fly, I'm all for it. I'm just trying to my wifely duty and protect your reputation."

"Ray, I've been to Missouri. It's not the eighteenth century there. I'm pretty sure all your female relatives would kill someone who suggested they had a wifely duty."

_"Shuttlecraft Mercury, Zephyr landing control. Standby for remote docking sequence and tractor beam acquisition."_

"Zephyr, Mercury. Autonav set to remote mode." Ray sat back and folded his arms behind his head. "Kind of nice to make a regular approach and not have to burn in at full thrust, huh? Less chance of a sudden crunch at the end."

"I suppose so," Nate said, a bit distracted as he watched the ship grow larger. "I never worried about it."

"Really?" There had been plenty of hairy landings, but the most memorable was one where they'd careened in dodging disruptor fire, while the ship itself was also dodging a torpedo spread. It had literally ended with them scraping the paint off the top of their shuttle, on account of landing on the roof and all.

"Not the ones you were at the stick for, at least. That time you were sick and Lilley took over was a little rough."

Ray looked over at him, but there wasn't the slightest sign Nate was being facetious. In fact, he seemed to enraptured with his shiny new girlfriend to have bothered trying to make a joke out of it. Ray grinned and turned back to the controls, trying not to preen too obviously. 

The shuttle lined itself up with the gaping hole at the ship's ass, at which point flickering blue tractor beams took over and hauled them inside. They gently floated into one corner and touched down with a small thunk.

A petty officer in services gold was waiting for them when the rear hatch, holding a PADD in his hand. "Lieutenant Fick, Warrant Officer Person? Welcome aboard, sirs. I'm PO Liao, logistics division. The captain has requested that you meet her on the bridge at 0930. The ship is currently synched to San Francisco time, so you haven't gained or lost anything." He handed the PADD over to Nate. "Your quarters are on Deck Five, Section Two." 

"This level," Ray said, "outer corridor, forward-port?"

"Yes, sir. Your bags were delivered, but if anything's missing please let us know immediately so it can be sorted before we leave orbit."

"Thank you, petty officer," Nate said. They crossed the bay to reach the forward exit. 

"It still feels weird to have NCOs call me sir," Ray told him.

"You can still go all the way and hit full officer," Nate replied. "You're one or two courses away from qualifying at this point."

"Hey, I gave in to your evil wiles and went warrant track solely because I was taking the advanced tech courses anyways," Ray reminded him.

"I thought it was because you got tired of having to put up with SNCOs yelling at you about the appearance standards."

"That too." Ah, the look on the sergeant-major's face when he'd discovered that Ray was now a gentleman and technically a peer. He hadn't gotten to enjoy it long before his oopsie with the exploding warhead, but he'd savored the feeling while it lasted.

"I'll get you sooner or later." Nate grinned. "You're going to get drunk some day and wake up as a lieutenant, and then you'll realize how much shit I've put up with over the years."

"Christ, you would, wouldn't you?"

"I'll just say that you should be careful what you sign. I think this is us." Sure enough the door label listed Lt. Fick, MSgt Colbert, WO1 Person, one below the other. It was the only multiple occupant space he'd seen so far, aside from some junior enlisted bays they'd passed. 

It was nice, even if blandly sterile at the moment. The door opened into a living space, with a six-ish person round table, couch, and a couple arm chairs, and off to the right were a bedroom and bathroom. He'd shared quarters this size with six other guys when he'd first enlisted. Then he realized that he was just looking at one half, because over to the left there was an arch through the wall leading to another identical room. He upgraded nice to ridiculous; it wasn't as big as Brad's humble abode, but it wasn't far off either once you discounted the basement full of half-assembled computers and holographic projectors.

"Pookums, did we accidentally get assigned the captain's cabin? Are we getting spaced on the first day for invading her privacy?"

Nate gave him one of those looks. "That's where they opened up the wall between the room modules. Brad would have been next door anyways, and we get more useful living space."

That made sense. "I'm kind of insulted my quarters were not taken into account."

"I think you're still assigned a room in case you need it, but it's on a different deck since you're not a department head or CPO. Which could change if you did become an officer and got one of those slots, at which point we really could have the best quarters on the ship."

"You're not changing my mind that easily."

"I was thinking we could rearrange the furniture a bit. Use that half as a living room, put in another couch or something, and use this side for dining or anything else needs a bigger table," Nate said. "There's utility connections in this corner, we could set up a little kitchen."

Ray turned to survey it, half to make sure there was actually room for some counter space and half so Nate couldn't see him blushing. "Maybe I'll finally have time to teach you to use one."

"Uh huh."

"Oh, hey, a real bath tub, you don't see those on sixty-year-old troop transports," Ray said, poking around the other rooms. "Is that a queen size bed or a king? No more squeezing onto single bunks for us."

"I feel like it's taken us five minutes to start displaying every stereotype of soft Fleeties that we've ever disparaged," Nate said dryly. 

"It was always ninety percent jealousy, at least on my part." A thought occurred to Ray. "Computer, time."

_"It is 0912 hours."_

Nate looked between the bare walls and the pile of boxes near the windows. "We could probably start unpacking some of our shit."

"I was thinking more that we've got time to break in that mattress."

"Really? Now?"

"Why not?"

"We're due on the bridge in fifteen minutes."

"Fine, we can save the bed for later," Ray said, giving Nate a playful push back toward the couch. "We don't even have to get undressed."

"I'm not showing up to meet the captain with a stained uniform."

Ray pushed again and Nate took a few steps back. "Are you saying I'm messy?"

Nate laughed. "You are known to slobber."

Ray gave him a final shove and he flopped back onto the couch, landing with his legs spread in a way that suggested his objections were more rhetorical than actual. Ray knelt down between them and opened up Nate's fly.

"You are fucking incorrigible," Nate moaned as Ray took him into his mouth. Putting his hand on the back of Ray's head and guiding him further down seemed less corriging and more encouraging, but whatever, he wasn't the language expert.

"Your face is still red," Ray remarked ten minutes later as they stepped into a lift. 

"No, it's not."

"It really is. I don't know why, you're not the one was just sucking cock."

"There was still some participation on my part," Nate replied. He glanced at Ray, frowned, and reached over to wipe something from the corner of Ray's mouth.

"What? Seriously? There's nothing there, I checked." Now Ray was feeling paranoid, which may well have been the point of the gesture. Nate only focused that hard on being expressionless when there was bullshit about, either command's or his own.

When the door hissed open, Ray's [first impression](https://tadeodoria.com/projects/A9Wd9z?album_id=68213) was that someone was giving the middle finger to wartime austerity. Gone was the scuffed metal and drab beiges of most ship's he'd been on. The floor looked like blue-grey driftwood, even if it felt and sounded like tritanium with a non-slip coating under his boots. That was echoed with various gleaming railings and trim, while the walls were a lighter grey. The entry alcove was toward the rear on a raised level; at the center of it was a wide tactical console and additional workstations lined three walls. Shallow ramps flanked a central command area with a trio of chairs, while ahead of that near the viewscreen were paired helm and ops stations.

Standing at the front by the helm and backlit by a test pattern on the viewscreen was a woman in a captain's vest uniform. Captain Yang was a middle-aged woman, in that vague area between forty and sixty where modern medicine kept people looking that same, of Chinese descent. She was a lot like Ray in build, neither especially tall or short, unless compared to a Viking, and her dark hair brushed her shoulders.

She noticed them standing at the rear and, after saying a last few words to the tech at the helm, waved them over. 

"Lieutenant Fick and Warrant Officer Person," Nate said, "reporting for duty, captain."

"Yang Mei-li. Welcome aboard, gentlemen," she said, shaking their hands in turn. Her accent sounded vaguely Martian, an odd blend of American and Chinese dialects formed when the colonies united to survive after the last world war. "Follow me."

She led them through one of the forward doors and into her ready room. It had a more cozy feel, the decor darker and warmer, and the lights a bit less harsh. Yang settled down behind a wide desk with smokey glass top and gestured for them to take two chairs across from her.

"I was pleased when Admiral Soltani forwarded your file to me, Lieutenant," Yang said. "She spoke quite highly of you when we were discussing candidates. I'm glad to have someone with your level of expertise on my command team."

"I see, ma'am," Nate said, more mildly and less skeptically than Ray could have managed.

"I know it's hard to believe. Yasmine tends to be stingy with praise to people rather than about them." Yang ran her hand along a blank spot of the desk. A holographic display shimmered into existence, blurred to the point of opaqueness from their side, and keys lit up under the glass. "We'll be facing some challenges, especially the first several months. We're going to be running lean in most departments, yours included. In fact, only Science is currently at full staffing. A lot of our crew is very fresh as well, people just out of training or pulled from frontiers that didn't see fighting."

"I understand, ma'am. I don't think there was a single point in the last two years my units had all our billets filled. I'm sure we'll make do."

"As long as there's no more leeches, it'll be a walk in the park," Ray said. They both looked at him. "Tell me it's not true."

"We'll try to avoid those," Yang said dryly. "I see you're going through the tactical refresher at a fast clip."

Nate nodded. "I've been spending most of the day in the Academy holodecks working my way through it."

"Any problems?"

"My scores haven't been up to my usual standards," by which the overachiever meant in the B range, "but I'm assured I'll have the essentials down before we launch. After that I'll continue to brush up on any deficiencies."

"Very good. Your second, Lieutenant j.g. zh'Ethret, has something of the opposite situation. Her experience is entirely as a weapons officer on the _Khamsin_. I think you'll complement each other nicely."

"I'm sure we will, ma'am."

Yang tapped a few keys and turned her attention to Ray. "So. Not just an information warfare specialist, but the hero of Torros III."

Ray was taken aback. "I, uh, don't think anyone calls me that?"

"Not publicly, obviously, but I was captain of the _Cavalry_ during that battle. Once I saw the unit name in your record, it wasn't hard to put two and two together and request the right classified files. Very impressive work."

"It was just replacing a few parts," Ray said, ducking his head. 

"Replacing a few parts," Yang repeated. "In that case, it sounds like you'll fit in well here. I'm assigning you to lead the Comms-Comp Division."

"Me? In charge?"

"You. In charge."

"Listen, captain, I've bossed a few people around on missions, kept an eye on the other techs once we hit company level, but I don't have a lot of leadership experience. The sergeants did all the supervising, I just told people how to blow sh-tuff up."

"It's a good thing it's a small division, then, only about twenty people."

"Shouldn't this be an officer billet?"

"Typically a lieutenant of either grade, but the regs say a warrant officer will suffice. It's better than putting an ensign fresh out of the academy in charge of critical equipment." She took another look at the display. "It looks like you're aiming for promotion to line officer anyways. You're taking a lot more classes than you need just to hit the continuing ed requirements for Senior Warrant."

"I'm really not," Ray assured her.

"Believe me, we've had that conversation a few times," Nate said. "He's been reluctant to take that step."

"Oh?"

"I think it's a matter of his lust for power warring with his disdain for being an authority figure."

Ray started to respond but caught himself. Not quickly enough, apparently, because Yang looked at him and said, "Yes, Mr. Person?"

"Nothing, ma'am."

"No, go ahead."

"I was going to say something lusting for him, but, y'know." He nodded at her. "Captain, right here."

"Thank you for sparing my delicate sensibilities. Since we're on the subject of spousal affections, I noticed you're married to our master-at-arms."

"We are, ma'am," Nate said. 

"Just last week, too. Congratulations."

Ray beamed at her. "Thanks."

"Lieutenant, I see you've had a PPS-368 on file for Mr. Person for two years now, but the one for Master Sergeant Colbert's dated from when his transfer was approved." Yang looked at Nate expectantly, while the latter seemed a bit annoyed that someone had actually read his permission-to-fuck forms and done basic math. 

"Our relationship prior to the end of the war was professional," Nate said stiffly. "We were friends, but nothing more."

"I don't know, you did have this whole weird telepathic bond thing going, even if you weren't getting it on," Ray said, leaning forward a little. "Between you and me, cap'n, I think it was my special BBQ brisket that melted Brad's icy heart."

Yang gave him a surprised smile. "You cook?"

"When I can. There's only so much you can do with nothing but a camp stove and whatever you can salvage from meal kits."

"We'll have to compare notes sometimes. I'm trying to find a chef for the lounge, but - I'm getting off topic. Lieutenant, it seems like things are in order, so just make sure the counsellor doesn't have to hunt you down."

"It won't be a problem, ma'am."

"Yeah," Ray added, "I'll make sure Master Sergeant Talkative gets to his."

"When can we expect him to arrive?" Yang asked. 

"Early next week," Nate told her. "He just has to finish handing over some responsibilities in Recon first."

"Good, he'll still be here before the bulk of the junior crew. I feel like I've scored a bit of a coup getting the three of you. The ranger community tends to be a bit insular, and the ones who do move to less demanding positions don't come to exploration duty often."

"We are a tribal and superstitious lot," Ray agreed.

"As I noted earlier, a lot of the crew is inexperienced, and with Starfleet stretched thin, we'll have to take care of ourselves. I'd like the sergeant's top priority to be setting up a training regime for crew who haven't seen combat, officer and enlisted alike. I don't expect him to turn them into - how should I put this?"

"Politely or impolitely?" Nate asked. 

"Politely."

"Experts in advanced combat techniques and field survival skills."

"And impolitely?"

Ray grinned. "Cold-hearted killing machines, whose ability to murder is matched only by their prowess between the sheets."

"I'm not sure I believe that's actually the impolite version," Yang said. "But I get the picture."

"I'd like to get through at least one month of marriage before he murders me," Ray said, "so I self-censored a little."

"Thank you, Ray," Nate said with a sigh. "I'm sure Brad will be thrilled to put a training plan together, ma'am."

Ray hoped to be in the room for that conversation. 

"Very good," Yang said. She stood up and they followed suit. "Take the day to get settled in and familiarize yourself with the ship. Lieutenant, I'll send you an agenda for a meeting tomorrow. Please feel free to add any other topics you want to cover. Mr. Person, we don't have an Ops officer yet, but the chief engineer should be able to answer any questions you have. Dismissed."

They exited back to the bridge. Ray waited until they'd reached a lift station to say, "She was nicer than most captains I've met."

"That's because you've only met captains when you've done something wrong or are in the middle of a combat situation."

"What about Picard?"

"That falls under 'something wrong'. Deck three."

"It was an awards ceremony."

"You were teaching an android to do something called "The Robot" without telling him that was the name."

"It's a traditional dance among my people, and he thought it was funny. Or at least the little chip in his head did."

"It was kind of funny," Nate said as they stepped out of the lift.

"You thought it was amazing!"

"I was hammered."

Ray leered at him. "No, I only hammered you afterward. This isn't your office, is it?"

They'd stepped walked down a corridor and through a set of doors into a large room, mostly empty except for a bunch of boxes and a forlorn-looking table. The sign had said security office, but this seems a bit much even for Nate's august personage. 

"This is just for the NCOs and meetings, I think these in the back are for me and Brad." There were indeed a pair of actual offices, separated from the main space with frosted glass, each large enough to comfortably hold a desk, a couple chairs, and a couch against the outer wall. A single man-height window looked out into space. 

"You know, I could help you," Ray started. 

"No."

"Fine, you can decorate it yourself."

"That's not what you were going to say."

"It was, and you can't prove otherwise." Ray sat down on the couch to test the cushions and bounced a couple times.

"Still no."

Ray's office, four decks below, was much less impressive. It was just a single room off the corridor leading from the central lift shaft to the computer control center, barely large enough to fit both a desk and a couple seats. That was one desk and a couple seats more than he'd ever had to himself before, so he supposed it wasn't something to complain too much about. At the same time even Ray wasn't horny enough to want to break it in. 

The control room was a control room, a few sets of computer terminals, a conference table, and a big master display of the ship's network covering one bulkhead. All very functional, very boring. But through the starboard door there was something special. There was a big compartment on the other side, split up with transparent aluminum safety dividers. There were a bunch of memory buffers and stand-alone test servers and coolant units, but the true star was the computer core. It was a cylinder a good fourteen meters across, rack upon gleaming rack of isolinear chips and subspace processors, and that was just on this level. It stretched upwards almost to the top of the ship, six decks above. There was more processing powering in just one deck segment than a starbase might have had when Ray had been born, and enough memory storage to hold the sum total of the Federation's knowledge. The useful parts, anyways. 

Best of all, there was another identical core, positioned symmetrically to starboard, and apparently they belonged to him. 

"We need to call Brad," Ray said, staring at the wondrous sight before him. After years of dealing with just what he could carry around in a backpack, or maybe a couple privates' packs if he was lucky, now he had a truly massive pair of ample units to fondle. And that wasn't even counting the secondary processors or stand-alone terminals throughout the ship.

"Why?"

"To tell him we're adding new members to this marriage. He won't mind, he loves computers even more than me."

"He loves computers more than you love computers, or he loves them more than he loves you?"

"Both. The fact that they're twins is just icing on the cake."

"That might be true." Nate put an arm over his shoulders. "Don't worry, though, I'm not planning to replace you with a torpedo launcher. The tube's a little large even for me."

Ray was enraptured enough that it took an embarrassing amount of time to catch on. "I always knew you were just using me for my body."

"Maybe if you were an officer we could have a truly deep and meaningful relationship." Nate gave him a quick slap on the shoulder. "I'm going to go take a look at the armory and tactical pod, see what kind of state they're in. You can stay here with your toys if you'd like."

"Oh, hell, no, I'm coming with. No one's ever allowed me within a hundred meters of an actual torpedo warhead before."

"Really? What about that time on Vorash?" Nate asked as they walked back to the lift, leaving the new loves of Ray's life behind. 

"Okay, fifty meters, but that thing wasn't even double-digit kilotons."

They spent about an hour touring the ship, checking in on key locations, before returning to their quarters to unpack their shit. Despite living light the last few years, on account of the constant death-defying antics, they'd accumulated a surprising amount of junk. Between various awards, Nate's art, Ray's posters and family knicknacks, and Brad's ridiculous fucking bat'leth tourney trophy, it was a complete clashing mishmash of styles. Ray loved it despite the offense to good taste.

Nate insisted that they try to socialize for lunch rather than eat in. Ray didn't actually object to the idea, especially since he no longer had to eat in the same mess as slobbering enlisted peons such as himself, but he protested regardless just because Nate thought he might and he wouldn't want to disappoint. 

The Aerie, as the main longue at the front of Decks Two and Three was christened, was one of those rooms Starfleet used to try to distract people from the fact that they were in a tiny can surrounded by a billion miles of vacuum and radiation. Light blue walls, teak flooring, high ceilings, plenty of room to move around freely, big windows providing a nice view of the distant blue marble, nothing to suggest you might die horribly any minute if any of a thousand vital things broke. The upper level was set up for dining; on the lower workers were installing longue furniture and gaming equipment.

They stopped by the replicators for some chow, a pork chop for Ray and tempura tribble for Nate, and the LT made a beeline for a table with a couple of junior lieutenants. One was a man in gold, the other a woman in blue, both young and mousy. Not the pre-war LT young, either; he may have looked like he was about twelve but under the uniform there'd been a lot of wiry muscles. These folk just looked kind of soft. 

"Hi, do you mind if we join you?" Nate asked.

"Not at all," the woman replied, gesturing at the empty seats. She sounded English, but Ray wasn't sure from which part. He'd visited a few times while at Ranger School, but his memory of those weekend leaves was, to say the least, hazy. "Dr. Jemma Simmons, chief medical officer."

"Leo Fitz, engineering," said the goldshirt, who turned out to be Scottish. 

"Nate Fick, chief of security."

"I'm Ray."

"It's nice to see people starting to come aboard," Simmons said. "We've been here for a week, and most of the time it's felt like a ghost ship."

Nate nodded. "I think I might be the only one from my department on the ship. I get the impression Starfleet's still shuffling a lot of people around."

"If you're not security," Fitz said to Ray, "and you're not one of mine, then who are you?"

"IT lead, as of, like, two hours ago."

"Oh, thank God. The network's being a nightmare on the lab decks, half the equipment we're trying to install won't talk with the latest version of LCARs."

"To say nothing about what happened when we tried to test the EMH," Simmons added. "It was not happy at all."

If Ray was a believer in warrior spirit, his would be shriveling up right now. "I'll take a look at it."

"Ray's got a lot of experience making incompatible systems work together," Nate said. "Mostly Cardassian and Federation ones. He's an information warfare specialist."

Simmons smiled and chuckled. "Warfare seems like a good way to describe what's going on with the EMH."

"Has Starfleet always been hiding this from us?" Ray asked, waving a fork at their luxury-liner surroundings. "Did they think that if they made our ships comfortable, we'd never get off?"

"The discomfort never stopped us from getting off," Nate said. Honestly, and they said Ray was the one that couldn't be around polite company.

"Were you assigned to an older ship?" Simmons asked. 

"Empress Mathilda, up until about, what, eight months into the war? 51690-ish?" Ray replied. "Then the Jem'hadar blew off a nacelle, so they moved us to the _Appalachia_."

"What about yourselves?" Nate asked. 

"We were both on _Aryabhata_ , right out of the academy," Simmons said. "Nebula class, fitted out with a science pod. We were mostly on the rimward border, down near the Gorn and Sheliak."

"About as far from the war as you could get," Nate observed. There was no judgement there, just a simple statement of fact.

Fitz made a face. "Officially we were guarding the southern border near the Hegemony, but mostly we were doing tech R&D. Field-testing new torpedos, sensors, that sort of thing."

"I always wanted to fight a Gorn," Ray mused. 

Nate seemed skeptical. "You mean you always wanted Brad to rescue you from a Gorn."

"Come on, I could take one." Neither of the geeks looked like they believed him, either.

"Mathilda, Appalachia, those are both troop transports, right?" Fitz said after a few moments. "Not very exciting either, I imagine."

"I don't know, the parts where we got shot at were," Ray said. "Nothing like sitting in the middle of a battle hoping your escorts won't screw the pooch."

"I suppose that must have been an interesting challenge from a tactical perspective. Lots of trouble and not much to work with."

Nate and Ray glanced at each other. Nate said, "When he says we were assigned to those ships, that means our unit was aboard them. We were passengers, not crew."

"Cargo," Ray corrected. "Passenger implies being treated at least as well as the pets. The captain's dog had a better bed than I did."

"Wait, were you infantry?" Fitz asked. 

"Starfleet Expeditionary Command, One Commando Brigade, First Reconnaissance Battalion, Bravo Company. He was the company commander, I was his cabin boy. Or senior tech specialist." 

"Recon commandos?" Simmons said, eyes wide. "You're special forces?"

"Technically, no," Nate told her. 

"What's technically got to do with anything?" Ray scoffed, "I think we spent more time on detached duty doing special ops as the admiral's personal goon squad than we did with the battalion."

"The line could get a little blurry, especially as the war went on and things got assigned on an as-available basis more often."

"I literally dragged your ass across a planet hours before the war even began."

"I'm going to be honest, at this point I really doubt there was ever any actual dragging," Nate replied. To the wonder twins, he added, "Recon's mainly what it sounds like. We spend most of our time sneaking around and taking notes on what people are up to. The goal is to be in and out without a trace, not leave a trail of destruction for the enemy to follow."

"Vorash? Chintoka? Talnor V? What about that time we kidnapped the Tzenkethi ambassador's pet elephant?"

"I'm talking statistically, for recon units in general."

"Statistically, the safest place on a Steamrunner-class starship is the troop bay," Ray said, "and we know how that worked out."

Ray meant it as a joke, but Nate's face lost color and he took a sharp little breath in. It was ironic, in a darkly funny way. Ray didn't have the slightest memory of the actual torpedo hit. The last thing he remembered was Nate, ever the professional in front of the other guys, scooting slightly closer than usual on the long bench of the troop bay and reminding him they were buried in the deepest part of the ship, something that had become one of their stupid little traditions. Supposedly there had been several more minutes of 'god-awful noise' on his part, or witty banter depending on who you asked, after that. He didn't remember any of it, just the brief period he woke up on the medical frigate, and the only thing that remained clear of that was the sight of Nate sleeping at his bedside, his own arm wrapped in bandages. After that they'd shipped him in stasis back to Earth and Starfleet Medical's overflow wing in Mexico City.

"It was fine for ninety-eight percent of us," Nate said after a minute of silence so awkward you'd need a polyceramic blade to cut it. 

"Well, you know what they say, statistics are for large numbers, not individual occurrences," Simmons said with forced cheer. "How did you end up here, then?"

"I got blown up in one of those space battles and spent six months with nothing to do but collect CE credits," Ray said. "Then when the war ended, Nate's evil fairy godmother said he had to join a starship crew."

"Is that an actual fairy?" Fitz asked hesitantly. "Like an Sirellian or something?"

"No, like a really cranky grandma who's got an awesome voice and a tendency to send goon squads out ot murder anyone who opposes her."

"Enemies of the Federation, Ray," Nate said, very clearly wanting to roll his eyes. "And it's not murder if they're legitimate military targets."

"So did this evil godmother," Fitz said, oh so very skeptical of the term, "get you both assigned here?"

Nate started to open his mouth, but Ray beat him to the punch. "Nah, I'm his husband, so we're posted together. We got married last week when he received his assignment."

To Ray's surprise, Nate leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was practically chaste, certainly by the depraved standards of your average ranger, nevermind Ray. It still caught him off guard and left him uncomfortably flushed. Nate had always been careful to avoid PDAs while aboard ship or in the field, although leave had been a free-fire zone. They all had found out about them within hours, of course, and razzed Ray about being the LT's kept boy with their usual lack of mercy, but the gesture toward discretion and professionalism had been there. Now they were in separate chains of command and, more than that, they were officially A Thing.

Ray kinda liked it. Another sign he was getting soft and mushy.

"Awww, how sweet!" Simmons said, flashing them a brilliant smile. "A wartime romance!"

"I didn't realize rangers were allowed to have feelings," Fitz said. 

Ray pointed at Fitz with his knife. "I think I like you, sir. We're issued a very small number of them, mostly variations on anger and aggression. I actually fell in love with him the first time I saw him kill a Cardie. It made my heart go pitter-patter."

"I want to object to that," Nate said, "but honestly I can only verify proximity-induced lust before then."

"Oh, yeah, we're just overflowing with that emotion."

"I don't know if I can claim love quite that precipitously," Nate said, "but I think I really saw the potential when I woke up being molested by him in a cave full of sheep."

"I might have to retract calling it sweet," Simmons said, "but it's certainly fascinating."

"I'm sure I can think of some actual romance if you give me enough time," Nate said, even as he signed _"beach"_ with a flash of his fingers. 

"What about that drinking contest on the Maha'cha?" Ray suggested. _"Too much sand."_

"I don't think that's suitable for polite company. "Nate grinned. _"It's coarse and gets everywhere."_

And yeah, laying on that Risan beach, watching the moon rise while Brad played his Vulcan guitar in the background, was the first time they'd had a chance to do something properly romantic. Nate sticking around after Ray deliberately exposed him to some more dubious highlights of his culturally backwards upbringing had sealed the deal. 

"Maybe that time you gave me those custom knives for my birthday? Oh, wait, no, that was Brad."

"You remember he got those as a package deal and gave the same thing to me a month earlier, right? There were a lot of complaints about his lack of creativity at the time."

"How could I forget his fucking sword?" Ray should probably be glad Brad didn't get him socks, because sometimes he seemed like that sort of person. "Hey, doc, how long of a sword do you think you'd need to fight a Gorn? Asking for a friend."

"I think I'd prefer a phaser," Simmons said. 

"Preferably a ship-to-ship one," Fitz added. 

"Yeah, obviously, but if there was, like, an energy-dampening field."

"Model 98s have regenerative power coils, they're resistant to those now."

God save Ray from engineers trying to techsplain weapons to him. "Work with me here."

"If you have to stab it," Simmons said thoughtfully, "a spear seems like the best option. Something with a cross bar to keep it from pulling itself up the shaft to strangle you."

There was some further debate about how best to beat a lizard, or reptile as the geeks insisted, without just vaporizing the fucker. Their new shipmates had truly charming naivete about the likelihood of ever needing to stab something larger than themselves. Fortunately that would be Brad's problem, not his. 

After lunch, Ray spent his afternoon alternating between critiquing Nate's decoration choices and digging in to tech manuals. Shiny as the ship was, he could see why some of the final work might be turning into a shitshow. It was a new class to begin with, but there had been little time to thoroughly test the prototype, and _Zephyr_ in particular had been rushed through much of the construction process while the war was still going. Things had slowed to a more reasonable pace after the armistice, but plenty of issues had slipped through the cracks and were only now surfacing.

The next morning, after a workout and breakfast, Ray headed down to his office. Several messages were waiting for him, mostly about various computer problems, but one was from Simmons. Apparently he was due for a checkup first thing, because he hadn't gotten enough medical tests lately. 

Sickbay was located a few decks straight above, near the center of the saucer section. The main intake room wasn't that large, with enough space for three beds plus a semi-circular exam nook at the rear. An office was off to the left, along with a door leading further into the medical section.

"Good morning, Mr. Person," Simmons said, exiting her office. "Thank you for being punctual."

"I figured I might as well get this out of the way. You did get my file, right? The one that shows I was literally just given another exam and okay'ed for duty a few days ago?"

"I did," Simmons said. She led him to the exam bed at the rear of sickbay. "But we still need to do an onboarding exam just to make sure I'm fully familiar with your history and condition."

"If you say so."

"Luckily, this will go faster than usual since there's a number of tests that don't need repeated. Shirt and pants off, please. Computer, privacy screen." As Ray stripped down to his skivvies, a semi-opaque barrier shimmered into existence between the exam area and the rest of sickbay. "Take a seat on the bed. I'll get a blood sample drawn, then run you under the scanner."

"I know the drill, doc."

Hold your arm out, lay down, sit up, breath in, hold it, breath out, ditto, put your right foot in and shake it all about. Ray had gone through this routine so many times he could do it in his sleep.

"Looks like they did a fine job grafting the clone on," Simmons said, closely examining Ray's left shoulder and in particular the line where some of his ink suddenly stopped. She bent over to look at his knee as well. "Have you experienced any tingling or numbness in the extremities?"

Ray shook his head. "Not since they took that last piece of shrapnel out of my hip last month."

"Any sexual problems?"

"Nooo. Nope, not at all. That system has been tested thoroughly and is fully functional."

"The muscle tone suggests you've been following your PT routine? Excellent. Dr. Ululuaela has very good reputation as a neurosurgeon, but patient compliance still plays a key role in getting it all synched."

"I've heard the lecture plenty of times." His eye roll attracted her attention. She held her tricorder by his temple while shining a light in his left eye.

"I see you went with the low-profile synthetic instead of a clone or a VISOR implant. Any reason why?"

"Two words, doc: x-ray vision." They'd also told him it would return him to full vision more quickly, and the simpler model was more reliable in the field than the one with all the extra features.

Simmons' forehead creased. "You understand it does not actually have x-ray vision, correct?"

"I do _now_ ," Ray sighed. "The terahertz backscatter is pretty cool, though."

"Any blurred vision, double vision, headaches, nausea?"

"Nausea sometimes, when I cycle through the alternate spectrums. They only turned that on a few weeks ago, and I'm still figuring out how to use it."

Simmons nodded. "That's normal. Your brain's learning to process the new signals. Take it slowly, only a few minutes at a time, and keep the other eye closed if you need to use it long."

"Yes, ma'am, I'll be careful."

"People like you say that, but then they come back with eye strain or pulled muscles. You can get dressed now."

Ray tugged his pants on. "So do I get a clean bill of health?"

"You could use a little more calcium, but that's normal for someone with new limbs. Otherwise you're in excellent shape. It's quite a speedy recovery from such a serious injury. I imagine having your husband around was a big help. Psychological support's as important as physical assistance."

"He, uh, was actually deployed still until a little over a month ago," Ray said, suddenly finding the zip of his shirt fascinating. "He couldn't get leave while the war was still on, and it took a while for them to get back to Earth after."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Nah. I've had to put up with worse shit. Like, y'know, getting shot at and torpedoed and all. We stayed in touch, too. I don't want to think about what kind of favors he had to do to get people to donate so much of their comm time." Brad had given all of his, but he couldn't have covered more than half of it. Ray didn't know her well enough to feel comfortable suggesting the favors involved sucking cocks, so instead he flashed her a quick grin. "Gave me some motivation to get on my feet by the time he got home."

Simmons deactivated the privacy field. "You'd be surprised at how important that is, even with modern medicine. And speaking of motivation - please make sure Lt. Fick makes it to his own appointment. He seems like the sort to actually show up, but at the same time he's infantry, and _that_ sort tends to need dragged in."

"Sure no, problem, doc. Hey, since I'm here, what's the trouble with the EMH?"

Simmons sighed and rolled her eyes. "Watch this. Computer, activate EMH."

A balding man materialized out of thin air. "ShoqA vodiCh ma shem."

"Huh," Ray said, scratching as his hair. "That's a classic Zimmerman Model One, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be speaking Klingon."

"No. I can't figure out how to change the language settings, and the computer refuses to translate."

"This is intolerable," the EMH said, still in Klingon. "I'm a medical professional, not a toy to be flipped on and off at will."

"You know, I think they were going to pawn a bunch of these off to the KDF," Ray told Simmons. "We kept running into situations where Starfleet personnel were rescued by Klingon ships and their medical facilities were shit. Maybe it was going to be one of those and they never reset the program."

"Given to the Klingons? That's absurd. Doctor, I urge you, don't listen to this man. He's clearly delusional. Probably due to head trauma, or narcotic use."

"Hey, watch your mouth," Ray shot back, also in Klingon, "or I'm going to shove a logic probe up your ass." To the doc, he added, "I'll take a look at it. If I can't figure it out, I'll have Brad take a look too, he's more into holographics than I am."

"Brad? You've mentioned him a couple times."

"Yeah, our other husband. He was our company sergeant, he'll be joining us pretty soon. Tall, blond, smoking hot, you can't miss him. I'll say this, I may have ended the war missing a few parts, but I definitely came out ahead on the spousal front."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to Tadeo D'Oria, who created the [bridge](https://tadeodoria.com/projects/A9Wd9z?album_id=68213) for a somewhat unrelated project for me.


	3. Let My Spirit Carry Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brad shows up and discovers the ups and downs of cohabitation.

**USS Zephyr, passing Mars  
Stardate 53260**

The familiar tingle and sparkles of the transporter faded away, leaving Brad standing in yet another transporter room. He didn't have much time to observe his surroundings, because he was immediately attacked by some sort of mutant ape from a wretched part of Earth. 

"Ray," he said to the creature wrapped around him in a tight hug. "Please remove your arms, before I remove them for you."

"Is that any way to talk about your sweetums? Also, protip: the new arm doesn't actually detach."

"Then I'll try the other one."

Ray released him and took a step back. "Did you get what I asked for?"

Brad unslung a sack from his shoulder and handed it over. "Several kilos of genuine Martian Sichuan peppers. Do I even want to know why you want these?"

"Ingratiating myself with the boss, obviously. Come on." Ray hopped off the transporter pad, and said to the tech behind the control console, "Thanks for bringing him up in one piece."

She tipped her head. "No problem, Ray."

"Sally, Master Sergeant Brad Colbert. Brad, this is Chief Petty Officer Sally Monroe, our head transporter chief. We're colleagues in Ops. I'm a division leader now, aren't you proud of me?"

"I am impressed by your ability to bullshit yourself to ever higher positions," Brad agreed. He followed Ray out into the corridor. 

"I have an entire ten people aboard who have to do what I say. That's about a third as many as this ship is designed to have, so we're a little bit busy. Speaking of which, I hope you can still gargle out decent tlhIngan Hol, because we're having some trouble with the sickbay holo systems."

"I'll see what I can do, _after_ I report in to the lieutenant and see if he has any actual work for me."

Ray laughed in a way that suggested he knew something Brad didn't. "Oh, he's got work for you alright, but you'll probably prefer helping me."

"He mentioned in his last message that we're a little understaffed."

"You're basically missing a couple people from each tactical division, and an entire platoon from security. Now, I know Bravo never hit full capacity under your watch, but let's face it, we're talking about goldshirts, not rangers."

"Ray, are you aware that we're both in gold?"

"Oh, sure, but that's just to blend in with our surroundings so that we don't scare the children and livestock. Also, have you ever noticed that it's really more of a mustard? It doesn't roll of the tongue the same way, though." They reached a door a few decks down and toward the front of the ship. "Here we go. Come on in, mi casa es su casa. Literally. Your bedroom's over on the left, our love shack is on the right." He flopped onto a couch under the windows. "And look, furniture that hasn't been sat on by thousands of asses!"

Brad nodded approvingly as he surveyed their quarters. They had clearly tried to match the colors to his house back on Earth, giving in a nice Mediterranean feel rather than the generic Starfleet beige or grey. There were shelves along several of the walls, holding some souvenirs and awards they'd all collected, plus a bunch of Nate's books. Nate had clearly gone ahead with the idea Brad had suggested about installing a kitchen nook, too. A single retro-rock poster was present as a nod to Ray's own backward tastes. 

"Very nice," he said, walking to his bedroom to drop off his duffle. He turned around moments later. "Ray."

"Yes, oh blood of my blood?"

"Why are my walls puke green?" Brad asked in his mildest possible tone. 

Ray grinned up at him. "It's to symbolize your skill at spilling the blood of your enemies. I thought green was appropriate since you're from Vulcan and all."

"I suggest you fix this, before I paint it red."

"Okay, but seriously, this is cool." Ray bounded to his feet and into the bedroom. "The quarters have this cameleon coating on the walls, you can change the color scheme with the controls by the door."

Well, it looked like today was once again not the day Brad was going to kill his best friend. Or husband, because sometimes Brad had no common fucking sense and let himself get roped into Ray's swirling vortex of nonsense. The only thing more dangerous was Nate when his idealism and pragmatism lined up. This situation combined the two. Brad loved them both dearly, but sometimes he'd rather be living with Klingons; they were less emotionally taxing. 

"Where is the LT, anyways?" he asked. 

"He's working, I'll take you to him. I gotta show you something else first."

Ray led out around the corridor, past the enlisted mess, and up a ladderway to the deck above. They entered another set of quarters, this one bare except the built-in couch along the outer wall by the windows and about two-thirds the size of what Nate or Brad's individual units would have been. There were several hefty boxes sitting in the center as well.

"So, uh, I know you like your privacy," Ray said, rubbing his hands nervously, "and that sometimes I can get to be a bit much. So I figured, these are technically mine, but you can use them if you ever need to get away."

"Trying to get rid of me already?" Brad asked, suppressing a smile.

"No! I just, I get this whole deal isn't really your thing, so."

"Relax, Ray," Brad said before he could work himself into a tizzy. "I appreciate it. What's in the boxes?"

"Go ahead and take a look."

The first one he checked revealed several curved metal forms, and under those carefully-packed handlebars. He opened another box and saw a thick wheel. 

"Is this a dirt bike?" Brad asked. "With a combustion engine?"

"One of my cousins does restorations and replicas. This one's not actually, y'know, two hundred years old, because I'm not stupid enough to bring one on a ship where it might get blown up, but it's pretty close to the real thing except for the backup power pack. I figure we can get it put together, and if we're ever somewhere antigrav doesn't work you'll have something a bit nicer than the standard-issue ones."

"That'll be fun." Brad paused and swallowed to give himself a moment to keep his composure. "It's very thoughtful. Thank you."

Ray's entire body seemed to relax. "Just don't expect anything for your birthday."

"I wouldn't expect something anyways," Brad retorted, getting his metaphorical feet under him again. Administrative marriages were not supposed to spark feelings. "Celebrating birthdays is arbitrary, egotistical, and wasteful."

"You sure give a lot of birthday presents for someone who thinks that." Ray reached behind his back and drew an inky-black knife. He twirled it between his fingers.

"The armorer gave me a good deal for getting a whole set, and I don't need that many knives. Sharing made sense."

"Sure, because a whole set means enough for three people. Let's go find the LT, he'll want to talk to you too."

Ray took him not in the direction of any of the security or tactical areas, or even the bridge, but back down to the inner ring of Deck Five. They stepped through an extra-broad set of doors and into a haze-filled disaster area. It was the bridge of a ship, probably this very one, and someone had thoroughly worked it over. Half the lights were out, several different alarms were blaring, and a number consoles were shattered and leaking smoke. Bodies littered the floor, one of them pretty familiar.

"Hey, what the fuck is this?" Ray yelled, giving his corpse a kick. 

"Shut up, you're dead," Nate shouted back, without turning away from the tactical station he was manning. "Helm, ship coming from three-three-five, take evasive pattern delta."

"Shouldn't you be taking orders, not giving them?" Ray said.

Nate pointed over the tactical station and into the command pit, where two bodies presumably belonging to the captain and first officer lay face-down. "It was a surprise attack."

"That's no excuse for letting me die. You know I don't have life insurance, right? It's not a thing anymore on Earth."

"If you're going to complain, try to get the shields angled better."

"I'm pretty sure raising the dead is cheating," Ray said, taking up the auxiliary station next to Nate. "Also, you remember the bridge ops training I've been doing has been, like, comms and system management, not combat-related, right?"

"You're been in enough battles to figure it out."

"I can figure out this ship is fucked. Have you noticed that we're surrounded?"

"No, of course not."

The floor lurched and Nate lost his footing. Brad stepped forward and caught him from behind. "Easy, there, Nate."

"Brad!" Nate got himself steady and turned around. Despite the carnage around him, not to mention sweat-slicked hair and no small amount of grime, his face instantly lit up with a brilliant smile. For a moment he seemed like he was going for a hug just like Ray, but instead he stopped with just an arm clasp and a quick pat to the back. "I'm glad you're finally here. I missed you."

"It's only been two weeks," Brad reminded him. 

"That's still longer than we expected. How did things go? I can't believe they dragged you out to Mars just to finish the changeover."

"I don't want to interrupt," Ray said, tapping Nate on the shoulder and pointing him at the view screen, "but that Jem'hadar ship's about to ram us."

"Oh, fuck!" Nate scrambled for the controls, but the screen flashed white. A few moments later the entire room shimmered, resetting to a corpse- and damage-free pristine condition. 

"Simulation complete," the computer announced. "Elapsed time, forty-three minutes. Ships destroyed: twelve."

"Should I be proud or ashamed?" Brad asked. 

"For this class?" Nate gave him a little 'eh' hand waggle. "A little above average. It's definitely improved over my last try."

"A little above average seems pretty good for someone whose specialty is ground operations. Stealth ones, not heavy combat." Brad frowned as he noticed something. Most of the dust and ash on Nate had disappeared, but when he reached out and touched one of the remaining marks on Nate's cheek, his finger came away with a splotch of blood. 

Nate's smile took on a sheepish appearance. "Don't worry, the safeties are on, they're just set to medium training level. A few little scrapes and bruises aren't anything to worry about. It's important to have verisimilitude to prepare for the real thing. I'm assured of this."

"Don't worry, we can take care of that," Ray said. "Computer -"

"Ray, please don't."

"- activate EMH."

"Please state the nature of - you again!"

"Huh," Brad said. "I can see why you asked about my Klingoneese."

"tlhIngan Hol, Brad, it's rude to use the Standard term. Hey, rust bucket, fix the LT up."

"This is a holodeck, there's no real equipment," the EMH said. "What do you expect me to do, kiss his boo-boos to make them go away?"

"Whoa there, no one's kissing the LT except me. Or Brad, he seems like the sort to get off on how ruggedly scruffed up he looks." Ray looked to Brad with eyebrows raised. "You want to give it a shot, my darling hubby-wubby?"

"Computer, end program and deactivate EMH," Nate said. The entire room fade back to the gold-on-black grid of the holodeck. "Let's take this to my office, I've got a medical kit there."

"You can see why I'm glad to have some adult supervision around," Ray said as they exited the holodeck. 

Brad snorted. "I think that's the first time in your life you've ever said that."

"I'm a married man now, Brad. It's time for me to grow up and be responsible."

"I was under the impression that where you come from, marriage usually comes after a determination of who's responsible for an unexpected fetus."

"Bradley. Bradikins. Bradums."

"Ray," Nate said warningly.

"Too much? Yeah, those don't fit at all. But as I was saying, I'm wounded, offended, and going to sign you up for sensitivity training."

"Why don't you go find out why auxiliary fire control still can't talk to the ventral phaser array?"

"But I want to spectate."

"Brad's not a performing monkey."

"No, that's me. But fine, I know when I'm not wanted. I'll catch you guys later."

Brad fondly watched him split off at the next cross-corridor. "He seems to be settling in well."

"Yeah, I was concerned the transition might be a little jarring, but he's hit the ground running. If anything, the clean break may be helping." Nate tapped his combadge. "Fick to zh'Ethret. Meet me in my office."

_"Yes, sir."_

"You'll like my second, she's very enthusiastic."

"Historically, sir, enthusiastic officers and I have not gotten along."

"I'd like to think I was enthusiastic."

"Selectively." Brad frowned, something Nate echoed when he caught it.

"Something wrong?"

"I feel like I should have followed that with a remark about your enthusiasm for Ray's cock or ass," he explained, "but it feels dirty to say that on an actual starship."

"Don't worry, Master Sergeant. You can feel free to be as dirty and explicit around me as you want."

They entered the tactical office space, where a few junior NCOs looked up from their desks, and then Nate's own office in turn. He'd personalized this space a little too, filling a small set of built-in shelves behind his desk with his college, OCS, and Recon School diplomas, plus yet more books. Several framed images of former units hung by the window.

They had barely sat down on opposite sides of the desk when a young junior lieutenant popped her head in. "Sir?"

"Come in and have a seat," Nate said. He pressed a key on his desk to frost the glass and close the door. "Lieutenant, this Master Sergeant Brad Colbert, who despite his rank is our department CPO. Sergeant, Lieutenant j.g. Talas zh'Ethret, my deputy and also lead for our so-called security company."

Brad nodded. "Ma'am."

Ethret was what most people would call average height and Brad would call short, although the Andorian's antennae might reach the top of his head. Her skin was a deep, almost lapis blue, and her hair a bit greyer than average for her kind. 

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Master Sergeant," Ethret said as they shook hands. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Have people been talking outside of class?" Brad asked with a glance at Nate.

"Don't worry, Brad, your reputation is in good hands." Nate folded his hands on the desk. "So, let's get the sergeant up to speed. Lieutenant, how many people is security division supposed to have?"

"Not including myself, three officers and ninety-six to one-oh-three enlisted."

"And how many do we have?"

"Two ensigns and fifty-two enlisted, mostly lance corporals. No senior NCO qualified for a company slot at all."

"I've got potential lead for company sergeant, but you'll have to wear two hats for a while," Nate said. He looked apologetic, and also like the worst was yet to come.

"Ray did mention something along those lines," Brad said. "He seemed very cheerful about it, despite being short-handed himself."

"That's because two-thirds of the crew hasn't held a phaser or thrown a punch since introductory self-defense during basic training, and the captain wants you to take charge of getting them into fighting shape that before we run into someone who wants to kill us."

"Correct me if I'm imagining things," Brad said wryly, "but wasn't there a war on?"

"Not a lot of call for biologists or anthropologists right on the front lines. Even the engineers had better things to do since a hand phaser won't stop a torpedo."

"If it helps ease your mind," Ethret added, "for a lot of the crew, basic was six to eight months ago, depending on how long their specialty school was."

"Far be it for me to complain, Lieutenant," Brad said to Nate, "but I was under the impression that the point of recent familial hijinks was to avoid being a teacher."

"If you wanted nothing but fighting, you should have been adopted by Klingons," Nate replied. "Starfleet's more varied."

"As I recall, I _was_ adopted by Klingons. You were as well."

"So were Ray and Walt. I remember a lot of bitching about the lack of mattresses from everyone but Ray."

"Ray was tripping balls on a combination of painkillers and bloodwine." Nate gave him a look that suggested he was going to replace Brad's bed with a metal plank if he didn't shut up, so Brad relented. "You said the captain's behind this? So we'll have cover against the other departments when we ruin their days?"

"Yes. I understand the boatswain has similar orders regarding zero-g and EVA certifications."

"At least I'll have competition for most hated man aboard."

"Remember, Sergeant, the goal is to be feared, not hated. We can try to work up to feared and loved."

"Yes, sir."

"Lieutenant, give Master Sergeant Colbert a tour of the security complex. I'll catch up with you guys after a shower and change of clothes, and we can talk scheduling then."

"Yes, sir," Ethret said, standing. "We'll start with the brig, Sergeant. It's right around the corner. Then the armory's across the deck, but it's not far if we cut across the cargo bay."

"Oh, good," Brad said, following her after giving Nate and then the medkit on the wall pointed looks. "Knowing where to find my guys after leave is always useful."

"Uh, I suppose that's true, Sergeant?"

"I'm kidding. No self-respecting member of the Recon community would get caught doing anything that would cut their leave short." Caught being the operative word.

The lieutenant gave him an uncertain smile. "I'm glad to have you as part of the department, Sergeant. I think having a former Ranger acting as lead enlisted member will really help offset some of our shortcomings."

"I still am a Ranger," Brad corrected. "We might be on ship duty, but traditionally anyone who passes the course and serves a tour honorably keeps the name. Even we eventually have to retire or downgrade to less physical positions."

"I thought about applying for Expeditionary Command," she said, "but my mothers wouldn't hear of it. Regular fleet was good enough for them and so it'd be good enough for me."

"What about your fathers?"

"They stayed out of it. Ch'era's an artist and th'era's an agricultural consultant."

"My parents have had the good sense to avoid providing unsolicited career advice," Brad said. "Still. Yours weren't entirely wrong. It's a specialized track with fewer routes for advancement, and you miss a lot of the sight-seeing aspects people expect from Starfleet."

"Why did you join, then?"

"It was the most challenging thing I could find that didn't involve math."

Ethret chuckled. "Is that one of those stock phrases they teach you?"

"No. Why?"

"Lieutenant Fick said something similar, only about biochemistry."

Brad found himself smiling. "We were his second choice. He failed the Academy entrance exam."

Her antennae drooped a little. "Oh."

"With that said, I'm pretty sure that's how he determined what order to apply for specialties after OCS." In fact, there were a lot of decisions that Nate seemed to make based on a general sense of "fuck you, I can handle it." Join Starfleet, join Recon, agree to missions that no one in their right mind could expect to pull off, tame feral rednecks: his scale for the word reasonable was off-kilter.

Not that Brad, who'd allowed himself to be triple-dog dared into a fake marriage, was much better.

Brad spent most of his first day aboard meeting members of the department, touring the ship, and otherwise familiarizing himself with his new duties. He had an unsettling feeling that it wasn't really that different than what he'd become used. The exact setting was different, as was the responsibility for things like defending the ship or running evacuation drills, but ultimately it seemed to boil down to herding several dozen well-armed goons. 

Ray was already in their quarters when he arrived. He had a pile of little dishes and containers scattered around the tiny kitchen counter and a wok on the stove. 

"Hey, sweet pea," he said, waving with a knife before continuing to chop something green and tubular with the other hand. "Nate said he'll be here in five, so we should have your extra-special welcome home dinner ready pretty quick."

"Right, extra-special," Brad repeated. He hoped he could recognize whatever was being fixed. He took a minute to ditch his jacket in his room and take a shit. When he came back there was steam billowing from the wok, possibly full of some sort of powerful acid given how quickly his vision was blurring with manly tears. "I think my eyes are going to melt. Trying to poison us again?"

"Trying not to poison the captain," Ray replied. "You're my test subjects."

"That doesn't inspire confidence. Frankly, I wasn't aware your homeland was capable of producing any food that didn't come off a grill."

"Listen," Ray said, pointing his spatula at Brad. "It may have taken my two hundred years and a nuclear holocaust for my people to learn to cook something spicier than cream-of-whatever casserole, but these days we've got a culinary tradition that doesn't involve pushing a button on a replicator, which is more than most places can say."

"Alright, fine, I'll take your word that you know other styles."

"Take my word," Ray grumbled. "Your poor kitchen hadn't been used in years, until I came along and showed you the wonders of a home-cooked meal, and you still bitch, bitch, bitch. Can you believe this shit, Nate?"

Nate, who'd stepped through the door around the first 'bitch', rolled with it. "I know, Brad's terrible. What's for dinner?"

"Sichuan-style kung pao chicken." 

"Wow," Nate said, taking a peek at the wok. He pulled away blinking rapidly, gave Ray a quick peck on the cheek, then took a few more steps back. "I'd say that's mouth-watering, but it's making everything else water too."

Ray frowned. "Do you really think it might be too hot?"

"Why is his criticism taken seriously," Brad asked, "and mine dismissed?"

"Because you're an asshole with no taste. Vulcans are the only people worse than the French when it comes to bragging about how subtle the flavor of their food is."

"Guys, can we not do this right now?" Nate sighed. "It's been a long day and I'd like tonight to not devolve into circular rounds of performative sniping."

"You feeling okay?" Ray asked, frowning over his shoulder. "You look tired. Brad, could you hit the go button on the replicator? I've got it preset for the sides and drinks."

"We just had our first senior staff meeting," Nate said, sitting down at the dining room table. "The XO arrived a little after you did, Brad. She's got a very forceful personality."

"Forceful good, or forceful bad?" Brad asked, carrying a plate of spring rolls and bowls of what looked suspiciously like cole slaw. "Or forceful nuts?"

"I'm not talking about this on an empty stomach."

"Fair enough. Ray, I've been thinking about your hologram problem."

Dinner passed largely filled with conversations about poor programming choices made by the self-described geniuses at Starfleet R&D. After everything was cleaned up, they retreated to the living room. Nate and Ray settled onto the couch by the windows, Nate sitting like a normal person and Ray laying lengthwise with his feet in Nate's lap. Brad took a cozy armchair facing them. 

"So what crawled up your ass earlier? I haven't seen you come out a meeting looking that grumpy since, oh," Ray paused to consider, "about the time McGraw bought it, which I'm sure is a coincidence."

"Don't speak ill of the dead. He wasn't that bad once the counselor got his anxiety meds dialed in."

"I'll speak ill of anyone I fucking well please."

"Dare I ask for more details?" Brad said.

"Commander Sevar is very... Vulcan," Nate replied, breaking out the non-committal tone he used when battalion command got a squirrel up its ass about something. Even Patterson had managed to elicit it from time to time. "A skilled biologist, as I understand."

"Oh, one of those. Let me guess, Vulcan Science Academy graduate?"

"I think so."

"Strange, I'd think you direct-entry types would get along."

"I'm not saying we don't get along. We may just have some different viewpoints to work out."

"That sounds like bullshit," Ray pointed out. 

"Did I mention she's also our chief science officer? At least until we get a real one, like we're waiting for an Ops officer. Until a month ago she was deputy commander of a research outpost near Deneva. From what I gather, her only other starship assignment was a year on the science ship _Ti'mur_ as an ensign. She's here in order to get the experience she needs for a station command."

Brad closed his eyes and counted to ten before opening them again. "Are we the only people on this ship who have actually seen combat?"

Ray shook his head. "Captain Yang's got a Star Cross, a Grankite Order, and a Pike Medal with cluster, that last for providing cover for rescue ships when Second Chintoka went to shit. I looked her file up."

Brad had to be mildly impressed. The first was related to exploration in hazardous circumstances, but the second was for innovative tactics and the third, one Ray and Nate shared, was for exceptional bravery while saving lives. It wasn't something handed out like candy the way some combat citations were.

"Sevar expressed interest in speaking with the master-at-arms regarding training for the science department," Nate said, "so expect her to pop up sometime tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Brad repeated.

"Tomorrow," Nate confirmed. 

"Tomorrow-tomorrow," Ray said, "or yesterday-tomorrow? That is a thing that happens, you know."

"I've had this job eight hours," Brad said. "I haven't had time to read the ship's health and safety manual, let alone come up with a plan."

"I am aware of this," Nate replied.

"This is an ambush."

Nate tipped his head and gave him a cheerful, slightly deranged smile. "It certainly feels like one."

"If she thinks I can't pull a skills refresher out of my ass, she doesn't know much about rangers."

Ray groped around under the edge of the couch, eventually pulling out a small PADD. "Mike did a stint at BRC while on disability, right? I'm not sure what his time zone is on New Houston but I bet he'd be up for a chat if he's awake. What are you looking at?"

"Ray, are there PADDs sitting under random pieces of furniture back at my house?" Brad demanded. 

"No, of course not. Well, probably not. I think I got most of them cleaned up before you got home for leave." Ray shrugged. "If an idea hits you, you can't go looking for something to record it with."

"This is why I avoid cohabitating with people."

"You avoid cohabitating because you turn into a grumpy old man after work and no one can stand you."

"When was the last time you managed it?"

"The security chief on the _Huang Shangdi_ owes me a favor," Nate said, a little louder than strictly necessary. "I could send him a message, see if he'd shoot us anything he's got specific to handling non-line personnel."

"I'll take a look at the official training manual while you do that," Brad said, "and see what we should keep or ditch."

Ray reached under the couch, pulled out another fucking PADD, and tossed it to him. "So, I know I'm not actually involved in this."

"And I thank my parents' God for that."

"And I have a lot of things to deal with for my own job."

"So you claim."

"But if you want the advice of a lowly former corporal."

"You can't combine lowly and former," Nate said, "when you're now a higher rank. Go ahead and spill, Warrant Officer."

"Your real problem isn't the training plan," Ray said. "Like you said, even I could shit one out in ten minutes that will meet the official requirements. There's probably databases full of field refresher courses. The problem is that you've got a hundred and forty scientists who have been getting blueshirt blue balls for the past two years. If they have their lab time interrupted or get the impression this cruise isn't going to have plenty of research to write papers about, they'll riot. Worse, the chief geek is in a position to rain logical vengeance down on you."

Brad nodded slowly. "It would be nice to avoid a command structure that isn't actively trying to fuck us."

"And honestly," Ray continued, "I've got one actual network specialist and if you try to steal him for more than a few hours, I might kill you myself."

"I thought we were trying to get through at least a month without any familicide?" Nate asked.

"I am. It'd really ruin my sex life. But so would having to pull more double shifts just so Shivuh can run around a holographic forest for twenty hours a week or whatever the book says he needs. So, you know, in the interest of me not turning into an nagging, sleep-deprived, sex-starved cabin boy, try to keep the disruption down to the bare miminum you need to keep people from shooting themselves."

"He may have a point for once," Brad said. 

Ray lifted his head, the better to glare at Brad. "For once? For once! I can't believe I've saved your life so many times and this is the attitude I still get. Just for that, you're not getting laid tonight."

"Even if I had been planning to come anywhere near your inbred ass, which I'm not since this sham of a marriage involves no conjugal interactions, unlike some people I can go a forty-eight hours without having sex."

"Brad, should I take that to mean that while your husbands were trying to get this ship ready to actually fly somewhere other than to Neptune and back, you were enjoying some tight Martian pussy?"

"If I did run into a rugby player eager to express her appreciation of our fair fleet, it's none of your business," Brad replied smugly. "Besides, you don't seem to have actually been working that hard."

"How am I supposed to live vicariously through you if you won't share details?"

"I'd like to think," Nate said, "that there's no need to live vicariously."

There was a brief, awkward silence while Ray tried to figure out whether that was a joke. "I mean, you know, I'm satisfied and happy and all, but that doesn't mean I don't occasionally think about girls and tits and stuff, right?"

"It's fine, Ray," Nate said, giving him a little pat on his thigh. "I understand that you've got a limited imagination and need Brad's help to visualize your fantasies."

"Okay, you're not getting laid either."

"I feel like we've gotten off topic," Brad said before things could derail further. "Ray, be useful and look up Mike's contact info."

They spent a couple hours brainstorming, or at least Nate and Brad did, with Ray occasionally interjecting some outside perspective but slowly trailing off. Eventually he curled up and fell asleep entirely.

"Early night for him," Brad observed quietly. "Has he been getting enough sleep?"

"He was up at 0430," Nate said, "and didn't get off until almost 2200 last night. So no."

"Have _you_ been getting enough?" Brad asked, suddenly suspicious.

"I've gone with less for longer."

"Go to bed."

"I know my limits, Brad. I'll be fine."

"Go. To. Bed," Brad repeated more firmly. 

Nate shook his head but stood up regardless. "Looks like you're getting into instructor mode already, Master Sergeant. Hey, Ray. Ray." Nate leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "Wake up, sleeping beauty. Let's move this to the bedroom." 

"Yeah, I'm coming," Ray muttered blearily. 

Brad spent a while longer before turning in himself, getting up early to make a few more calls. He was in his office when the XO showed up mid-morning. Commander Sevar was tall by any standard and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. She carried herself stiffly, the sort of posture you got from spending more time worrying about appearing proper than running for your life. More interesting was her hair; it was a light brunette, almost verging on blonde, a rarity on Vulcan.

"Good morning, Master Sergeant Colbert," she said. She had a very formal, traditionalist accent; on Earth it might have been compared to England's received pronunciation. "I would like a few minutes of your time."

"Of course, Commander. Please, have a seat."

"Thank you."

"Am I correct in thinking by your accent and appearance you are from Timruhk region?" Brad asked, referring to one of the southernmost parts of the planet. 

"You are," Sevar said with a slight inclination of one eyebrow. "You are familiar with Vulcan localities?"

"I grew up in Shikahr."

"I see. Are you related to the Professor Colbert who was a guest lecturer at the Vulcan Science Academy?"

"She is the one who is my mother," Brad said, unconsciously slipping back into Vulcan speech patterns. "She taught there for twenty-two years."

"As I said. I recall her from my time as a doctoral student. While comparative law is not my specialty, as I remember her scholarship was considered adequate. Particularly given the limited time she had to develop it."

Yeah, she was definitely one of _those_ Vulcans, whom the rest of the planet logically believed might be better off far away from everyone else. Every planet had its assholes; Vulcan were just extra-good at honing them into especially logical ones.

"Thank you, ma'am. What can I help you with?"

"I'm sure Lt. Fick has informed you of the captain's desire to make sure that the crew can meet basic combat readiness standards."

That was not how Nate had relayed it, but it wasn't technically inaccurate either. "Yes, ma'am. I've been working on a plan for that this morning."

"Very good. I don't believe it should be that difficult or take very long. While there are certainly quite a few people whose certifications have lapsed, understandably given the recent emergency, it should be easy to have them report to the range to requalify."

This sort of thing was exactly why Brad preferred to have Nate between him and anyone of command rank. Contradictory bullshit was supposed to be handled before it spilled onto him. "The instructions I was given suggested something more in-depth, and for everyone who didn't fall within certain parameters for combat experience."

"I'm aware that was suggested," and that right there was proof enough Brad was dealing with regular Fleet, if 'suggestions' from the captain herself were being treated as if they really were just suggestions," but I don't think it's necessary. While I'm not opposed to members of the science department participating on their own time, or as part of their dedicated CE hours, I can't justify requiring it. We have a lot of work to do standing up the department, and not much time before we reach our operating sector."

"Being able to aim at a moving dot is not the same thing as true readiness, ma'am," Brad said at maximum politeness. "I was told to include practical modules on self-defense, field survival, and repelling intruders."

"We're scientists, Sergeant. Our away teams will be operating with communicators, tricorders, and a security escort, not going into combat situations."

"Unfortunately, that's no guarantee those skills won't be needed. Even by scientists."

"To be clear, I am not a pacifist," Sevar said. Her tone remained blandly conversational, her expression flatly disinterested. "I understand defense is an important function of Starfleet, both on an organizational level and for individual ships. At the same time, specialization is equally important. It's what allows us to function in an efficient and productive manner. I'm sure you can agree, given your background. The Rangers benefit from more focused training regime than Starfleet Security. Within them, Reconnaissance fills a different role than Peacekeepers. You cannot expect scientists to be expert marksmen, any more than I expect you to understand exotic biology."

"I absolutely agree, ma'am," Brad said, nodding along. "People in gold like me should be doing the fighting, not the ones in blue. Unfortunately, in my experience, the Jem'hadar do not agree. Neither do the Klingons, for that matter."

"We're no longer engaged in hostilities with either polity."

"Wildlife, then. It's statistically more of a danger to away teams than hostile sapients." Once you discounted the entire 'war' incident. "Your xenobiologists have a tendency to get bitten by things. The fact is that occasionally people have to defend themselves when security personnel aren't available."

There was a hint of sharpness as she replied, "Are you saying that your security guards are inadequate for the job?"

"Starfleet's official crew parameters say that they are. I'm sure we can make do, but away missions in particular could end up constrained if we can't ensure other members of the crew can cover basic safety and survival tasks, leaving us to focus on defense against hostiles."

Brad thought that might have hit a nerve. Turning her own argument around and suggesting that the Science Department might lose less time to training than they would if someone's bones were being gnawed on might get her to be agreeable. It depended on which way her logic was working: from starting premises to conclusion, or desired conclusion backwards to premises. 

"Which science divisions do you want to prioritize?"

"I'd prefer to start with Biology and Planetary Sciences, which are the most commonly assigned to away missions. Follow up with Social Sciences, for the same reason, and then Physics and Chemistry. This would make sure that the divisions most likely to require training receive it before we reach our area of operations."

"Hmmm. A logical sequence. Assuming, of course, it can be done without disrupting their existing work. Proper preparation is critical to ensuring we make the best use of limited time during survey missions."

"It'd be an average of four hours per person for the combat refresher. Four more for field skills for anyone who might be on a landing party. Eventually we need to hit everyone who's not up to date, but again - priorities."

Sevar's eyes narrowed fractionally. "That seems low."

"We can combine several things into each holodeck simulation. Anyone who runs into issues can be signed up for more specific retraining. I can't promise anything about that until we see the failure rate."

It was a calculated opening offer, just enough to meet their mandate while getting their foot in the door to conduct additional training down the road once they saw exactly how helpless people were. Better yet, it offered a chance to avoid involving the captain; better for everyone that happen for the sake of avoiding any embarrassment or grudge-holding. 

Not that Vulcans felt embarrassment or held grudges, of course.

Sevar rose from her seat. "Send me your proposed curriculum and a schedule for sessions by noon tomorrow. If it appears satisfactory, I will instruct my division leads to assign personnel to attend. Good day, Master Sergeant."

A little later, Brad and Nate escaped the office for a working lunch in the Aerie. 

"I may have been gone from Vulcan for too long," Brad said. "I think I'm losing the knack for reading emotionless faces."

"It's strange," Nate replied. "I've often found Vulcans to be very expressive."

"You've mostly worked with Vulcans who have deliberately chosen not just Starfleet, but security and other combat specialties. They're weird."

"I hope there's at least a little self-awareness accompanying that statement."

"Absolutely. I'm well aware that humans, if you take away their luxuries and soft upbringings, are extremely cranky and aggressive people, well suited to warfare."

"Do you think she'll go for it?"

"I think she'll make a counter-offer asking to trim the time a little further, but she'll be satisfied if we can fit everyone in before we reach the Bajor sector. We'll just have to cover the other departments once we clear hers."

"I think we've got enough people and holodecks to manage that. I noticed Sevar's own phaser certificate's out of date - I'll plan to handle her and the other department heads personally. Maybe make some kind of morale-boosting exercise out of it, a competition or something to show the rest of the crew we're all in it together."

"If you do, just remember that if you kick all their asses, that falls under morale-crushing." Brad was momentarily distracted as a group goldshirts walked past their table. One handsome fellow in particular snagged his attention, then gave Brad a wink when he caught him looking.

Nate followed his gaze. "I think that's CPO Liao. Engineer, warp division maybe. Like what you see?"

"It's a nice view, but I don't shit where I eat." Brad started metally kicking himself almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. The way Nate's lips pressed together into a thin line just made him feel even worse. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I didn't mean - you know I don't approach relationships the way you do."

"No, I understand," Nate replied, in a very mild isn't-this-nice-weather tone. "Don't worry about it." 

Vulcan stoicism may have become harder for Brad to read, but two and a half years serving under Nate had left him familiar with all of his expressions. This one was a classic, "LT annoyed by the idiocy of others but keeping his mouth shut for the sake of peace". This was pretty much exactly why Brad stuck to his one-and-done and nothing on the ship rules: if he didn't commit to more than a couple days of fucking, any missteps would shortly be left light-years behind. Now he was left wondering how to clean off the verbal dog turd he'd just stepped in so that it didn't stink up the ship for the next week.

Ironically, Brad couldn't blame this on their marriage of administrative (in)convenience, because it was a side-effect of friendship, a creeping infection that thus far he had not managed to avoid. 

"Any word on when this circus show is getting on the road?" Brad asked in lieu of sticking his foot further into his mouth.

"The captain will be making an official announcement this afternoon," Nate said, "but we should be heading to Starbase 327 to pick up the remainder of the crew tomorrow. Call it a week in transit, depending on how much she decides to push the engines."

"That fast? I guess Starfleet must want us really want us out there."

Nate's bitch face started to fade, replaced by a bit of cheer. "We may be short-staffed, but we're still a brand new ship. We get to the frontier and they can pull back two that haven't seen a repair dock since the war started."

"Sir, far be it from me to criticize my glorious leaders," Brad said, latching on to the lifeline, "but you seem awfully excited to cruise off into the unknown with an untested ship and crew."

"It's Cardassian space, we've been there before."

"Sophistry, sir? I expect better of you."

"I'm a Fleetie now. I need to make sure my rhetoric is up to par in case I need to talk a computer to death or convince a space god not to turn us into marmots."

"Don't we have phasers and torpedoes for that?"

"Peaceful explorers, Brad. We're peaceful explorers now."

"Don't remind me."


	4. Through the Revolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's some space pirates.

**USS Zephyr, Occupied Cardassian Space  
Stardate 53309.1**

Nate had been prepared for a lot of unusual things when he agreed to join a starship's crew. Strange new worlds, exotic life, unknown cultures and customs: everything that the recruitment brochures and popular dramas said was an everyday part of life in Starfleet. He knew, of course, that the vast majority of the ship's time would be spent flying from point to point, or surveying new-but-boring planet number thirty, much as a ranger's life was more repetitive training and less daring rescues performed by the same five-to-six photogenic individuals.

Ray sitting at a primary station on a starship bridge was a bit outside the scope of what was expected. 

With the Ops department short-handed, routine bridge shifts had to be spread about anyone qualified, and that now included Ray. Nate, in addition to shifts at tactical, was on the watch officer rotation and in command of the ship as a whole. He may never have faced to famous no-win scenario traditionally required for bridge officers, but he'd passed somewhat more difficult practical exams. 

Not that there was anything to win. The main enemy to be faced on a beta shift bridge watch while cruising through deep space was boredom. They'd reached what used to be Cardassian space a week earlier and nothing had happened at all. 

"Everything okay, sir?" asked Lt. j.g. Sito Nerax, the ship's Bajoran flight control officer, with a glance over her shoulder. 

"Yeah. Why?"

"Most officers don't pace quite so much."

"Sorry," he said with a chagrined smile. "I'm used to standing more."

There was a small snort from the left of them, which Nate chose to ignore. He continued his slow circuit around the bridge. It was only the fifth or sixth, which considering how late into the watch it was getting wasn't that many. Sitting too long was bad for you anyways.

"Mr. Person," Nate said quietly when he reached the Ops station. "Are you laughing at the officer of the watch?"

"Oh, no, sir," Ray replied. "I wouldn't dream of doing anything so uncouth and unbecoming a member of Starfleet."

"Very good, Warrant Officer."

"With that said, I seem to remember a lot of training went into making certain individuals very good at holding still for long periods."

A meter to Ray's left at Tactical, Petty Officer Aras, a three-armed, three-legged Edosian, was giving them some side-eye. "I think we were trained in being silent, too."

"Got it, sir." Before Nate stepped way, something wibble on the console and drew Ray's attention. A small, pensive frown formed, the sort he usually got when he was worried about an upcoming op and focusing on his gear to keep the jitters away.

"What's wrong?" Nate asked. 

"It's probably nothing."

"You don't look like it's nothing."

"Okay, so look at this here," Ray said, pointing at the display area of his console. "This is our subspace radio monitor. You can see the little spikes on these frequencies, that's all the normal ship-to-ship chatter, while the longer waves down here on the gamma bands are the long-distance civilian backbone links, right? This bottom one's the kappa bands."

"Emergency channels?" Nate asked. Ray nodded. "Looks a little fuzzy."

"Yeah. It started showing up about ten minutes ago. Direction finding says it's off to starboard a little. It's probably just backscatter off a subspace gradient or something. The whole reason everyone uses kappa for emergencies is that a low-power signal can carry further, but that leaves a lot of low-level background noise."

"Lieutenant Sito," Nate said, "alter course to zero-zero-five."

She nodded. "Aye, sir."

"That should bring us a little closer without getting too far off course. Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, sir."

About twenty minutes later, Ray leaned over his console to tap Nate on the back of the head. It wasn't an orthodox method of getting someone's attention, but it worked anyways. 

"So, I still can't pull out an actual signal," Ray said, "but I've narrowed down the source of the noise I'm picking up. It's about five light-years away, in the spacelane between Cardassia and Minos Korva."

"You think it's a distress call?" Nate said, trying to find some pattern in the static.

"No, but it is the sort of random noise you'd generate if, say, you were trying to jam one."

Nate looked from the display to Ray. He looked back, cocky, confident, and very pleased with himself. Rather than ask a question he already knew the answer to, Nate turned. "Helm, alter course, heading zero-five-one by two-nine. Increase speed to warp nine. Yellow alert, captain to the bridge." Quietly, he added just for Ray's benefit, "If this isn't real, I'm throwing you under the bus."

"A wheeled bus, or one of your heathen hover busses?"

A few minutes later, one of the lift doors hissed open. The captain stepped out, still closing up her uniform's jacket. 

"It's 2243, lieutenant," Yang said. "I hope you have something interesting for me."

"We've detected a suspicious signal, ma'am," Nate replied. "Could be someone trying to jam communications."

"Show me."

"Here's the raw signal input," Ray said, pulling it up on the main viewscreen. "And this is a little trick the Cardies liked to use when trying to ambush ships or convoys. It's not identical, but it's pretty close."

"All right, you've got my attention." Yang walked around to her chair. "If this is trouble, let's get there fast. I've been wanting to test out the engines anyway. Helm, take us to maximum warp."

"Aye, Captain," Sito replied. "Answering maximum warp. Warp nine-point-five. Nine-eight." The constant background hum of the ship changed pitch. "Nine-nine."

Nate tapped his combadge as he replaced Aras at tactical and quietly said, "Fick to Colbert."

_"Colbert here. Why are we at alert?"_

"You know how Ray is about finding trouble. I realize you're off-shift, but go see how the ready team's doing."

_"Already there, sir. I may be having words with Sergeant ch'Tekket about their reaction time tomorrow, but they're ready."_

"Thanks, Master Sergeant."

Nate caught the captain looking at him over her shoulder, but they were both distracted as Commander Sevar came into the bridge. There was no sign of whatever she had been doing before, be it lab work or enjoying a bubble bath. She may as well just have been wandering in on a normal shift change.

"Is there a problem, Captain?"

Yang inclined her head slightly in Ray's general direction. "Warrant Officer Person thinks someone's out there jamming comms."

As she took her spot at the captain's right hand, Sevar gave Ray a look like the captain had just suggested the ship's monkey had started discussing eschatology. "I see."

"I can transfer the data to your console if you'd like, ma'am," Ray suggested. Someone else might have called his expression innocent, but Nate knew better.

"Please do so." Sevar pulled a fold-out display away from its storage space against the railing and out to where she could use it.

As the seconds ticked by, Nate's own tactical board started to light up as the long-range sensors began picking up a contact. At first it showed up as one object, but as the ship hurled toward it at breakneck speed it quickly resolved into two separate power sources. 

"I'm picking up two ships ahead, ma'am, positioned close together," Nate reported. "The jamming signal's making it hard to get specifics."

Yang nodded. "Helm, drop us out at fifty thousand kilometers."

"Yes, ma'am," Sito replied. "Thirty second to arrival."

The stars streaking past the viewscreen shortened back into a normal field. A pair of ships popped into view. One was a fairly typical freighter, a small, fairly flat ship based on the old Oberth-class with a much larger cylindrical cargo container slung under its main body. The other was the familiar raptor shape of bird-of-prey.

"Klingons?" Yang said, standing up and taking a few steps toward the screen. "We're a long way from their annexed planets."

"The bird of prey's B'rel class, Block K. Freighter's a Vostok-class container tug, demilitarized model," Nate said. "Looks like there's plasma scoring around the freighter's rear, possibly from disruptor fire."

"There's something janky about the Klingon ship's engines," Ray said, scowling at his display. "It's not running an IFF transponder, either."

"Janky is not data, Mr. Person," Sevar said. "Be more specific."

"Yes, ma'am, just a minute."

"Hail them," Yang said. "I want to know what they're doing out here, and why they're hiding it."

Ray used one hand to hit the comms controls while still using the other to manipulate the scanners. The little hail indicator spun about forlornly. Nate had an itchy feeling at the back of his neck; the entire situation seemed off and he wanted to do something about it right that instant, but it wasn't his call anymore.

"Hold on a second," Ray said. "I got a ping from on their backup transponder. IKS Yamarr, reported as abandoned and scuttled a year ago."

"Red alert," Yang said, swinging around and returning to her chair. "Arm phasers and quantum torpedoes."

As alarms started blaring and the lights dimmed, Nate checked his status boards. "Shields up, all weapons ready."

"Hail them again, Mr. Person. Maybe they'll pay more attention if -"

"They're locking weapons!" Nate shouted as the bird of prey's tractor beam shut down. It swooped around the freighter's other side and came back with its disruptors coming to bear and torpedo tube glowing green.

"Evasive!"

The ship rocked as a photon torpedo smashed against the bow. Nate would give their ship this: dubious final fittings or not, the lights barely flickered, a far cry how previous ships he'd travelled on had react to so much as a love tap. 

"Shields holding," Nate reported, one hand hovering over the fire controls and the other braced for the next impact.

"Target their weapons," Yang said. "Attack pattern gamma. Fire phasers as they bear."

It was just like the simulations. As the attacking ship swept past, Sito rotated _Zephyr_ along its main axis to keep their thinnest profile presented. Nate selected the appropriate arrays, chose preset fire times, and confirmed the computer's suggested aim points. Then he just hit the execute key and the fire control system took care of the rest: three-second discharge dorsal pylon array, five seconds dorsal primary, eight seconds ventral main as they swung into pursuit. It was all very staid and clinical compared to kind of fighting he was used to. 

"Multiple direct hits," Nate reported. "Their starboard and aft disruptors are damaged."

"We shouldn't be burning through their shields that fast," Sevar murmured. 

"Like I said, janky," Ray muttered under his breath. It was barely loud enough for Nate to hear it right beside him, but Sevar shot him a glance over her shoulder. Louder, he added, "They're powering up their warp drive."

"Tractor beam?" Sevar suggested. 

Yang shook her head. "Their aft shields are still too strong. Fick, disable their engines. Be careful with your aim."

Nate did as he was told. He placed one shot from the lower array right between the wings, just low enough to miss the main body but still hitting the shields, then two more second-long half-power bursts from the dorsals right into the glowing bar of the impulse engine. It flashed and exploded, sending the ship tumbling end over end trailing plasma.

"Captain!" Sevar shouted, raising her voice for the first time since he'd met her. Simultaneously, Ray said, "Their warp core's breaching!"

"Put us between them and the freighter and extend our shields," Yang ordered. "Brace for impact."

There was a momentary flicker of white in the middle of the Klingon ship before it exploded in a brilliant fireball. The shockwave hit a second later, a long, steady lurched compared to the short jolts of the weapons fire. It settled down after a few seconds.

"Shields held," Nate said. "No damage reported."

Yang stood and shook her head slightly, still looking at the screen. "That's a little more disabled than I hoped for, Lieutenant."

"I don't think that was their original reactor," Ray said almost immediately, before Nate could explain himself. "I still don't have the _specifics_ , but the signature was off and the safety baffles shouldn't have let it cascade like that. You may ask, how do I know? I've been on a bird of prey getting the sh - stuffing blown out of it."

"I'm inclined to agree," Sevar said. "I'll need to review the readings, but I don't believe the life-signs aboard were all Klingon."

Yang turned to the XO. "What about the freighter?"

"Two hundred and fifty-four aboard, multiple species. Forty-three in the main section, the rest in the cargo pod."

"Bridge to sickbay. Send a medical team to transporter room one for an away mission, and prepare to receive wounded." Yang turned around. "Lieutenant, take a team over and secure that ship. Be careful, it might be a hostage situation."

"Yes, ma'am." Nate hit a few keys on the security window, gave Ray a swift nod, and headed for the lift. 

Brad and most of First Platoon were waiting in the transporter room when he got there. So were Dr. Simmons and three medical techs. Brad wordlessly handed over a spare tactical vest and a phaser rifle.

"We'll beam over in two groups," Nate said, shrugging the vest on while standing beside the transporter operator and looking over a schematic of the freighter. "For the main section, I'll take two squads. We'll start here in this big room here at the bow of the middeck, it looks clear of life signs. Once over we'll split into three teams, one for each deck. Ensign Sage will take the rest of first platoon to clear the passenger level of the pod. It looks like the damage is confined to the upper section, so the medics will come with me."

Brad tapped Simmons on the shoulder and held out a hand phaser. "Looks like you forgot yours."

"I really don't need that," Simmons said, trying to push it back. "I'm a doctor."

"Klingons and pirates don't care," Brad said implacably, holding it out until she reluctantly accepted and holstered it.

"Alright, let's move," Nate said. Half of the security team crossed the hall to transporter two, while Nate, Brad, and four more stepped up onto the pad, taking up kneeling and outward-facing positions. A few seconds later the transporter chief gave them a three count and the machinery hummed to life.

They appeared in the corner of some kind of mess and rec hall, the other team fizzing into view at the opposite side. It immediately became clear that they were alone, and that the hall had been hastily abandoned, with still-warm trays of food and scattered decks of cards sitting about. The engines were silent and only dim emergency lights illuminated the room. They quietly checked the room and the corridor immediately outside, then signaled for the medical team to come over.

"Tekket, clear this deck and head for engineering," Nate instructed. "Iser, bottom level - it should be mostly crew quarters and cargo pod access. Thokozani, Killik, you're heading to the bridge with me and Colbert. Dr. Simmons, if you'd accompany me and split the rest of your team as you'd like?"

"You're the boss, apparently," she replied. 

"You can be in charge when we find a plague ship," Nate said magnanimously. There was a heavy sigh from just behind and to his left, but sadly Brad continued to refuse to participate in his ongoing debate with Ray regarding the efficacy of words at altering the future.

They swept out of the room and down the hall to where there was a companionway. Tekket's group covered them as one team went down and Nate's went up. The deck above was also on emergency lighting only. There was a single circular corridor that they started to follow counter-clockwise, checking each door as they went past and arrayed so that Simmons was firmly in the middle. Eventually, after most of a circuit, they hit a cross hall leading inward. Brad held out an arm just to make sure the doc didn't walk straight past it. A good thing, too; maybe she would have stopped, but if she hadn't the two gun-toting bad guys at the other end might have spotted her.

"I make it two humans," Brad murmured, peeking around the corner. That hall was even darker than the main, as several lights were out and a series of A-frame braces cast deep shadows along the walls.. At the far end was an open door leading into what looked like the bridge. "Look to be carrying disruptors."

Nate had the team pull back a few meters and tapped his combadge, which buzzed in readiness. "Fick to away team. We've spotted hostiles on the bridge. Report status."

"Tekket to Fick. Two hostiles in engineering, both down. Looks like there was a fire in here." Nate started to reach up to reply, but before he finished the motion the combadge buzzed again. "Iser here. We've found the most of crew, locked in the ship's gym. They say they haven't seen the captain or bridge officers."

"Stand by," Nate whispered. "Brad, let's get a little closer to the door." He looked at the other troopers. "You two watch our backs, make sure no one sneaks up behind us. Doc, stick close to them."

Nate and Brad began to leapfrog their way down the corridor, going from frame to frame and getting halfway to the bridge door before Nate felt the risk of being seen was too great. He pulled out his tricorder and did a quick scan. In addition to the two people at the door, there were six more inside the bridge itself: a Nausicaan, an Orion, a Tellarite, and three more humans. Only the first two had obvious energy weapons, although that didn't mean the others were unarmed for sure. His tricorder claimed he had only the two phasers, after all.

The scraggly looking pair at the door, a man and a women sporting identical leather jackets and buzz-cuts, didn't seem to be doing too great a job of being lookouts. They were more interested in trying to overhear a shouting match going on inside the bridge. It was hard to make out details, but the jist seemed to be that someone wanted the ship to move, and someone else was pointing out the engines had been shot up.

Unexpectedly, the pirates got lucky, in more ways that one. Something caught the man's attention, be it a tiny movement or a changed shadow, and he pointed down at the end of the hall. This was mostly lucky because Nate had been watching Brad's hands, somewhat concerned, as he reached for his custom throwing knives. Silent or not, that seemed a bit much for their first op as Fleeties. It was a bit early to explain to the captain why some of her crew carried around neurotoxins.

Momentary perception aside, the pirates spent more time gawking and straining their eyes than doing anything useful, so they were still lifting their rifles vaguely in that direction when Nate and Brad swung out simultaneously. Two center-of-mass phaser pulses later and they were falling. Brad put another into the door control as they ran down the hall. Before they quite made it all the way, several wild shots came out the bridge door, forcing them to take cover just a few meters away from it.

"Don't come any closer," a man shouted inside. It sounded like the Nausicaan; their fangs gave them a very distinct accent. "Or we'll kill the crew!"

"That's okay, we'll stay right here," Nate called back. "I'm Lieutenant Fick, Federation starship _Zephyr_. Can I ask whom I'm speaking with?"

"No!"

"That's not very friendly," Brad said to Nate.

"You shot two of my buddies, why would we be friends?"

"Huh. You've got very good hearing!"

"Thank you?"

"We're not dealing with professionals," Brad signed to Nate.

"Thanks for pointing that out, Sergeant," he replied the same way. Aloud, he said, "Your ship's been destroyed. You can't escape. You may as well surrender and get this over with."

There was some angry whispering from the opposite side of the room as the Nausicaan. After a minute he said, "If you don't let us detach the cargo pod and fly this ship away, we'll shoot one of these guys. And keep shooting them until you do. We'll do it if your ship follows, too."

"How many hostages do you have in there?" Nate called.

There was a pause. "Many!"

"My tricorder says there's only six people in the room. So at most that's, what, four? Three?" Nate waited a moment. "Let's say four. There's two hundred other people aboard. Obviously I can't put them all at risk. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right, Sergeant?"

"That's correct, sir."

"So really, it's best for everyone if we just talk things through. The other option is we come in guns blazing, but I don't think either of us want that, right? I doubt you're getting paid enough to be shot. I'm certainly not."

"Is your plan to treat them like they're Ray?" Brad signed.

"Not at all," Nate replied. "Ray wouldn't be stupid enough to get caught in this kind of situation."

"We want a fast shuttle," the Nausicaan man shouted after another muffled discussion. "We will release the hostages a neutral planet."

"I'll have to clear that with the captain. In the meantime, can I suggest you think about whether you'd rather be captured by us, or by the Klingons when they come looking for whoever stole their ship? The Federation penal facility on New Zealand is very nice this time of year. Rura Penthe is not."

Having given them something to discuss amongst themselves, Nate turned to Brad and signed, "Do you have a stun grenade?" 

Brad looked disappointed. "Why would I not?"

"Toss it in before these idiots do something reckless."

Brad slipped a narrow metal cylinder from a vest pouch and set the intensity and timer controls. He silently counted down from three and threw it into the room. Moments later there was an electric snap and bright golden flash inside the bridge. They were through the door before the light had fully faded. Only the Nausicaan was still standing, barely propped up against a chair, and Nate stunned him immediately. He and an Orion were the only ones armed; the other stunned occupants looked like freighter crew, and probably had already been bruised before they'd arrived.

"Clear!" Nate called out the door, bending over to search one pirate for weapons while Brad did the other. 

"This whole thing was fucking unprofessional," Brad complained as Thokonazi, Killick, and Simmons came into the room. "I miss the Jem'hadar."

"No, you don't." 

"The Cardassians, then. They knew how to negotiate in a hostage situation."

"Brad, the last time there was a hostage situation with Cardassians, we were the ones taking the hostages." Simmons glanced up from where she was examining a singed-looking Tellarite crewman with an expression like Nate had just confessed to eating live puppies. "Don't worry, doctor, we didn't actually shoot any of them. It's very bad form."

"And Admiral Soltani would have yelled at us for not bringing the target in alive," Brad added. "Again."

_"Stop frightening the locals,"_ Nate signaled him. 

"You're Starfleet officers," she protested. "We don't take hostages."

"No need to be insulting, ma'am," Brad said, grinning. "I'm not and never will be such a thing."

Nate gave Brad an exasperated look, then tapped his combadge. "Fick to Zephyr."

_"Go ahead, Lieutenant,"_ Yang replied. 

"The ship seems to be secure. I'll want to do another sweep to make sure no one's hiding anywhere, but after that we can start sending more people over to assist with repairs or medical triage. I've got four hostiles down and in need of transport to the brig near my location, two more in engineering."

_"Good. We're assembling an engineering team now. If you can find the freighter's captain, please have him brought over to speak with me as soon as possible."_

Nate looked around, and determined that the guy Simmons was working on had the most little gold stripes on his sleeves. "You may need to meet the doctor in sickbay for that."

_"Beam over once the ship is secure. Yang out."_

It took about an hour before Nate felt comfortable handing things over to zh'Ethret, once every room had been cleared and the medics had finished examining the crew and passengers for anyone injured enough to need treatment on the ship. Yang was waiting in sickbay when he arrived. Off on the exam bed, the Tellarite sat in a cloth gown, the left side of his face looking much pinker than usual for his species.

"He has a mild concussion due to several blows to the head," Simmons told them. "Also, sunburn from close exposure to a stun pulse. I've got him on neuralazine and a mild painkiller. He'll be fine once he sleeps it off. Their chief engineer has some burns and lacerations from an explosion. Dr. T'son has her in surgery for skin grafts and expects no trouble."

"Thank you, Doctor," Yang said. She went over to the Tellarite. "I'm Captain Yang Mei-li, starship Zephyr."

"Jurn hop Lokal, SS Terrapin," he replied in a gruff and gravelly voice.

"My security chief, Lt. Fick."

"The chatterbox," hop Lokal said, glaring at Nate. "Is Starfleet recruiting children now? No wonder I was injured if this pup was in charge."

"If this is your idea of gratitude," Nate replied, well-versed in how to politely respond to a Tellarite thanks to living with certain people for years, "we can give you back to the pirates and you can rescue yourself."

"Can you tell us what happened?" Yang asked. 

"The Klingon ship approached us an hour ago. Two? I don't know exactly. They demanded to board and inspect us. I told them we'd been inspected when we left Cardassia and sent our certificates, but they wanted to do it themselves. I thought it was a waste of time and told them so. By the time I realized something was wrong, they were jamming our transmissions and firing on us."

"Did they make any demands?"

Hop Lokal shook his head. "Just to see our manifest, once they realized our cargo container was too large for them to take under tow."

"Is there anything interesting on it?" Nate asked. "Or any notable passengers?"

"No! We're running mostly empty on this leg of our route. We're contracted to run Federation relief supplies from Minos Korva to Cardassia. They're not exporting anything but refugees right now. Nothing legal, anyway."

Yang tipped her head slightly. "And illegal?"

"Art and artifacts, mostly, but I don't deal in that. We make more on the contract that we could get trying to compete with professional Orions and Ferengi smugglers. We make a few stops on the way back to Minos to pick up some cargo and to add a little extra profit - Tolen, Gardeth, planets like that. Nothing valuable, though."

"It could just be opportunistic rather than targeted, then," Nate said. 

"We'll let you get some rest. Once your ship is up and running, we'll escort you to the nearest repair dock," Yang said. After they stepped away and out of sickbay, she told Nate, "Have the manifest compared to what's in their hold, and the passengers screened as well. There have been a few wanted war criminals trying to slip past the blockade. This could be the work of over-zealous bounty hunters."

"I'll get right on it, Captain."

Yang held up a hand. "Let me rephrase that - have your lieutenant do it. You get some rest, I expect we've got a long day ahead of us."

"Ma'am."

Naturally, Brad was lurking in the small arms locker off the transporter room when Nate went to return his rifle to its charging rack. He waited patiently as Nate stored his gear and they walked back to their quarters together. A soft snoring from Nate's bedroom suggested Ray had reached it first and probably sat down to rest for just a second. Nate left the lights low in the main room and ducked into the bathroom for a quick shower.

"Tea, sir?" Brad asked when he emerged a few minutes later. He'd stripped down to just his pants, which was more than Nate had on. "Or something harder?"

He already had a pair of steaming cups ready, correctly anticipating Nate's answer. 

"Not tonight, Brad," Nate said as he took one. It was chamomile, which Brad claimed was a traditional Vulcan drink for space travellers. They sat down on opposite sides of the dining table. "We're on a starship, I couldn't possibly drink."

"It's funny, that's never stopped us before."

"If we're going to break the rules, we should wait for Ray. Celebrate our first space battle of the year together."

"Must have been interesting to see what was actually going on for once."

"Yeah." Nate took a sip of his tea, then added conversationally, "I probably killed forty or fifty people today."

"Bad guys."

Nate nodded. "They shot first."

"Not the smartest move if you want a long life."

"No. But still. I'm not sure how long it took me to rack up that kind of count during the actual war." Probably three or four months, most of that spent in transit. The opening mission had taken most of a day and he could only be certain of two kills; he'd managed this in three minutes while sitting on a climate-controlled bridge. 

"That's because you weren't keeping precise track, like a sane person," Brad replied. After a minute, he added, "It's not the first time you've killed that many by pressing a button, either. Or at least ordering someone else to do it."

Nate chuckled. "As ever, Master Sergeant, your bluntness is appreciated."

Brad smiled ever so slightly. "You're welcome, sir."

"Are you sure you're not telepathic?"

"I have a low psi rating even for a human." Which meant nothing as far as Nate was concerned, because there wasn't a test invented that Brad couldn't fool if he set his mind to it.

"Seventy-three days, by the way."

"Excuse me?"

"If orders count. That's when Trombley shot down that dropship with a shoulder-launched missile."

It took a few moments for Nate to recall the incident, then he started laughing quietly. "The wreckage almost landed on us."

"The man has good aim, not good judgement."

"Fuck." Nate shook his head. "Where would I be without you to keep track of that sort of detail?"

"Lost in the woods somewhere, like most lieutenants."

Nate didn't get a chance to defend the navigation skills of at least some of his brethren. A barely-audible noise drew their attention to the bedroom; a second had them out of their seats. Inside the unlit room, Ray was curled up in the middle of the bed, stripped to a t-shirt and clutching a pillow tight in his arms. He whimpered softly and twitched, occasionally kicking slightly at something.

Careful not to disturb him, Nate sat down behind him. He put a hand on his shoulder and the movement subsided just a little.

"Does he have nightmares often?" Brad asked softly. The mattress rocked slightly as he sat down on the other side

"According to him? No." Nate shook his head. "A few times a month, while I'm around. Not every week. He claims that's about normal when he's alone."

"He likes to hide weakness," Brad said, with no apparent irony or self-awareness, "but he might be telling you the truth. What about yourself?"

"Maybe the same. I don't usually remember my dreams. It got worse after the armistice, and better when we got to Earth," Nate said. "Since we're sharing, Brad?" 

"I'm trained to lucid dream. Have been since I was a kid. When I have nightmares, I punch them."

Not for the first time, Nate wondered why anyone allowed human children within a light-year of the Vulcan education system. As handy as that trick seemed, he wasn't sure it was terribly healthy. Then again, his own upbringing had brought them to the same place with some of the same problems. 

Brad reached out and gently fixed a cowlick "I'm glad there's someone here for him. And for you."

"I'm glad you're with us."

The smile Brad gave him was a little bit wry, a little bit melancholy. "Good night, Nate." He got up and headed for his own room. 

The captain had the decency to wait until late in the morning to call a senior staff meeting. By that point they were underway to the nearest Federation outpost, keeping pace with the _Terrapin_ at a sedate warp four. 

"I understand our guests are refusing to say anything?" Yang asked Nate. 

He nodded. "They insist on speaking with their lawyers."

"Did you remind them that the occupation zone is under martial law?"

"To be honest, ma'am, I don't think they understand the difference."

"Do we at least know who they are?"

Nate looked at Sevar, who shook her head slightly. "They are not in any Federation criminal database, or carrying identity documents. A more in-depth search of local records or the census registry will take more time and permission from the judge-advocate."

Yang sighed. "The ship?"

"It was definitely the _Yamarr_ ," Nate said. "The hull markings and some preexisting damage patterns match our records."

"Sensor readings showed forty-three crew aboard," Sevar added, "not counting the six in custody. Only one Klingon. It is an eclectic mix of species from around this region. A full list is in your inbox."

"I spoke with some Klingon contacts," Nate told the captain. "According to official records, the _Yamarr_ took a bad hit during the action over Arawath Colony. They had to dump their warp core and the ship was abandoned. Apparently the self-destruct didn't go off."

"That would explain a few things," Fitz interjected. "I'm not going to use the word 'janky', but the ship had a lot of repairs done to it. The entire reactor assembly was clearly meant for another class entirely, probably an Orion model. It's a wonder it didn't explode when they turned it on."

"Is this the sort of thing they could have done themselves?" Yang asked.

"You'd need some kind of space station, with at least Class Two machine shops. Maybe you could do the repairs on the ground, if you could get it down in one piece. It's not something fifty people did."

"Is there anything about the Terrapin that stands out?"

Fitz shook his head. "It's an old tug with a long production run. There's about five hundred like it out there."

"The cargo matches the manifest," Nate added. "Nothing interesting."

"While we were doing medical checks of the passengers and crew," Simmons said, "we cross-referenced the DNA scans against those done by _Kyoto_ when the ship left Cardassia. They match."

"Person's checking the ship's log for tampering," Fitz said, "but unless it's been altered they haven't made any stops between here and there."

"So we have an apparently opportunistic act of piracy," Yang summarized with a sigh, "conducted by pirates working with someone who could repair their ship. Or they bought it, which might be worse."

"Captain Gralnath admitted that there has been some concern about Klingon materiel going walkabout," Nate said. "There's plenty of houses looking to get some working capital to pay for repairs or new ships, especially those out of favor with the new Martok regime and unable to rely on support from the main KDF yards. For that matter, there's a few ships suspected of having gone... independent rather than come home and stop fighting."

"Wonderful. Fortunately, it's not our problem." Yang folded her hands in front of her. "We'll be handing over the prisoners and our evidence to the _Ishtar_ for further investigation. I've been told to expect orders of our own soon. Apparently there's some trouble that Starfleet wants a newer ship to check out. In the meantime, work on after action assessments for your departments. I'd like to do a thorough review tomorrow morning and see if there's anything we need to focus on."

An actual mission sounded nice to Nate, but then, it always did. It was a predictable cycle among his kind: bitch about not having a mission, bitch about having a mission, bitch about getting shot at, get leave, bitch about not having a mission.


	5. Time Keeps On Slippin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are times shenanigans and Ray gets in a knife fight.

**USS Zephyr, low orbit, Carina III (Morgan's Hope)  
Stardate 53314.7**

"Now entering standard orbit," Lt. Sito announced, bright and cheerful even though it was just after 0800. Apparently that was how things worked on a starship: if you controlled how fast the ship was going, you could always make sure you arrived when the senior staff was on duty. That made sense to Ray. There was no point in showing up just to awkwardly fly around in circles while the B-Team explained that the captain was getting her beauty rest. What he didn't understand was why they couldn't have gone ever so slightly slower and showed up at, say, 1000 instead. 

Ray's console bleeped a few times and he glanced down at it. "Message from the planet, Captain. There's beam-down coordinates, greetings, and a request from the governor to speak with you asap."

Yang stood up from her chair. "Let them know we'll be down shortly. Did they say anything more about the trouble they're having?"

"No, ma'am."

"In that case - Number One, Mr. Person, you're with me. Lt. Fick, you have the conn."

If Ray were around normal people, he'd be able to show his enthusiasm on his first official away mission a bit more exuberant. This was a starship bridge, though, so he settled for giving Nate a big thumb's up as he followed the senior officers off the bridge. 

Halfway through the turbolift ride, as the silence grew increasingly awkward - at least in his opinion - Ray had no choice but to say, "You know, I'm not used to anyone looming over me like this except Brad. It's weird."

There was a long pause. Sevar waited until they stepped into a corridor then said, "Given your height, I would expect it to be common."

"Was that a joke, Number One?" Yang asked.

"An observation. His height is below average for an infantryman."

Ray sighed deeply. His height was perfectly fucking average by normal standards, but no, he hung out with tall people and so everyone decided he was short. What was really irksome was that Tony was about the same height and no one called him below average.

The three of them beamed into an open plaza, around noon local time. The town of Morgan's Hope wasn't much to look at, mostly one- or two-story buildings built along a couple roads that met where they stood. The square itself was paved with cut stone, but other than a few fancier-looking structures with brick faces everything looked like it was ceramacrete poured into prefab molds: very efficient if you were setting up a colony without a lot of manpower to space of looking nice, but nothing that was going to win architectural awards. There were a number of open-air stalls lining the sides of the plaza, but most were shuttered.

"Captain Yang," called a woman rapidly approaching them. Indian accent, dark-skinned, toward the upper end of middle-aged, short and pleasantly round. "Syreeta Tamboli, I'm the colony's governor. Thank you for coming so quickly."

"It's what Starfleet is here for," Yang said. The governor shook each of their hands. As she did, Ray took note of calluses on her fingers and palms; not from weapons, like his man had, but certainly more hard work than your average data jockey in an office got.

"Please, follow me," Tamboli said, leading down the street leading north. "The situation has gotten worse since our last message."

"I understand your colony has been here thirty years?" Yang said. "Looks like you're quite successful for such a recently established settlement."

"We've been very fortunate. Back during the border conflicts, this was never a contested system like so many others in neighboring sectors, which helped attract people wanting to relocate."

"What's the current population?"

"Ten thousand, in this district. Another ninety thousand up and down this coast, mostly in small villages. We've been very careful about planning out where we establish new towns and farms so that we don't overstretch our resources. Morgan's Hope is still our only spaceport and the main industrial center."

"I understand you were occupied for eight months," Sevar said. 

Tamboli nodded. "During most of 2375, until after the first Chintoka offensive. It," she hesitated, "wasn't as bad as some other worlds, from what I've heard."

"You have neither important resources nor a strategic location. I doubt they had much interest in expending effort here."

"That's more or less what the Vorta, Yewan, implied. It was just him and a dozen Jem'hadar. He said as long as we obeyed curfew and other regulations, we could continue our lives and the Cardassians wouldn't come. That's what most people worried about."

"Understandable," Yang said, "given their reputation."

"There was one incident, early on. A few farmers got rowdy while drinking in town, said something to one of the Jem'hadar. They lived, but," Tamboli sucked in a breath and let it out slow. "Yewan apologized and said the Jem'hadar don't understand that kind of disorderly conduct. After that people kept their heads down, until one day they just got on their shuttle and left. Sometimes I wonder if we should have done something. We outnumbered them so much, and some people have hunting phasers..."

"You did fine, ma'am," Ray told her. "I've been places that fought back. It's not as easy as it sounds when it's just talk. You gotta be sure it's worth it. Most of the time you're better of leaving it to us professionals."

They'd only done one drop to an occupied Federation world, to make contact with a stay-behind unit disrupting the Dominion's occupation of Betazed. They'd been there for three days; Nate hadn't slept right for a month afterwards, until the ship's counsellor had all but forced him onto medication.

"Thank you, sir," Tamboli said. "Otherwise, we've had to tighten our belts a bit, but we're mostly self-sufficient. Most of what we grow isn't for eating, but if you're creative you can get by. We've been eating a lot of jam."

"It's mostly viticulture here, correct?" Yang asked. 

"This area's excellent for a number of grape cultivars. We started exporting wine in bulk a decade ago. It can be a hard market to break into, but we're a long way from Earth, and we're starting to get a following for some of our nicer vintages."

"I'll have to pick up a few bottles for the ship's collection." Yang smiled at Sevar. "You look skeptical, Number One."

"As I understand, statistically the ability to distinguish between supposed quality levels of different wines almost disappears once past a certain basic level."

Ray couldn't keep his mouth shut in the face of that. "You're one of those people who drinks it replicated, aren't you?"

Sevar let out a distinctly un-Vulcan sniff. "Modern replicators are also indistinguishable from typical cooking for the vast majority of dishes."

Ray and Yang exchanged a look, two long-suffering believers in a sea of heathens. "More fresh food for us," she said. 

"Since we know we're well-off compared to a lot of people," Tamboli said, leading them around a corner, "we've tried not to impose, but we just don't know how to deal with this."

'This' was some sort of barn or warehouse. Despite being made out of prefab panels, one wall had a serious lean to it. The cheery red paint was badly faded compared to the rest of the building as well. 

"A tilting building?" Sevar asked.

"This sort of thing doesn't just fall over," Ray said, crouching near the wall but not in the direction it was leaning. He pulled out his tricorder. "Not unless it gets hit by a twister. You said the colony's thirty years old?"

Tamboli nodded. "It is. This building's only fifteen, though. Several collectives use it for aging."

"The main structural beams look like they're depolymerizing. These prefabs are only meant to last twenty years or so. The materials basically start biodegrading and turn to taffy if you leave them up too long." Ray took a few steps to the side. "The rest look fine, though. Did you reuse panels from older buildings?"

"It was all freshly replicated."

"Interesting," Sevar said, drawing her own tricorder. "A reaction to some chemicals in the winemaking process? Or perhaps the yeast - these are meant to be ecologically friendly if abandoned."

"Several of the barrels inside near the wall also showed signs of aging - brittle and warped wood, rust on the bands, spoiled contents."

"If it were just one oddity," Yang said, "you wouldn't have called Starfleet."

"No. Let me show you the most recent event."

Tamboli took them out on a rickety old flyer that was basically a frame, seats, and an antigrav engine, which even by Ray's astoundingly low standards looked like a fucking death trap. Aircraft weren't supposed to rattle around like someone's antique wheeled truck. 

"This happened yesterday," Tamboli said as they slowed down and cruised at running speed over a vineyard. It was the sort of rougher, rockier terrain that was good for white grapes. There was a long stripe running through it east to west, about three or four meters wide, where the grass and vines were all brown and wilted. They sat down at the far end. 

"Fascinating," Sevar said, examining the nearest vine with her tricorder. "The decay patterns are very unusual." She knelt down and poked at the grass and soil with her index finger. 

"There's little sprinkler lines and sensors along the wood post things." Ray asked. "Are those hooked up to a monitoring system?"

"The trestles," Tamboli said. "And yes, there's an automated nutrient system."

"I'd like to see the data logs."

Yang frowned as she stared down the length of the strip. "This is much larger than the last one."

"The first that we know of wasn't even a meter wide," Tamboli confirmed. "We've been lucky so far, but you've seen it's even happens in town. What happens when one crosses over a person? Do they age decades in an instant?"

"Wouldn't they starve to death? No, suffocate," Ray said. All eyes turned on him with varying shades of shock, concern, and Vulcan blankness, reminding him once more that he wasn't dealing with a bunch of Trombleys anymore. 

"Whatever the results," Yang said, "clearly it's something to be avoided."

"The worst part," Tamboli replied, "is that these are just what's been reported. We don't have any way to track incidents outside our settlements, and those cover a fraction of a percent of the planet."

"Command Sevar, contact the ship and have science teams assembled. I want every reported site visited at least once for scans and samples," Yang ordered. "Have cartography start plotting the locations as well. Maybe we can find a pattern."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Mr. Person, I realize you're primarily comms, but can you think of a way to efficiently conduct an orbital survey?"

Ray tried to come up with a Fleetie-safe way to inform her that his experience was almost entirely with making things not be fucking seen on sensors as opposed to finding them. Fortunately, a scraggly-bearded farmer dude in overalls was stomping their way. 

"It's about time Starfleet got here!" he hollered at them. 

"Zane, calm down," Tamboli said, holding up her hands. "I brought them out first thing. Captain, this is Zane Knoll, he operates this vineyard."

"I'm sorry we didn't arrive earlier, Mr. Knoll," Yang said, offering her hand. "I'm sorry about your crop."

"I don't care about that, I just want the fucking Cardies gone before someone gets hurt?"

Yang frowned. "Cardassians?"

"Who else do you think is doing this?"

"There are a number of phenomena that can cause rapid aging," Sevar said mildly. "None are known to be associated with Cardassian or Dominion technology."

"Known," Knoll emphasized. 

"You appear to be making assumptions without any data to back them up."

Knoll puffed up at that, putting his hands on his hips. "I've got 'data'. I've seen them myself, just last night. They were sneaking around the west end of the field, doing something."

"You saw Cardassians," Yang said.

"Four or five of them, about midnight. Over that way, near the end of the row."

"It couldn't be teenagers out having some fun?" Ray suggested. God knew he'd gotten up to some incredibly lame late-night shenanigans with his buddies at that age. Isolated rural life meant coming up with your own entertainment.

"The neighbor's kids are five years old," Knoll replied scornfully. 

"Zane," Tamboli said, "the warrant officer would like any logs from your field sensors, can you run and get those?"

He sighed. "Sure, if it'll help."

She waited until he was out of earshot and lowered her voice a little anyways. "There's no Cardassians."

"He seems awfully sure," Yang said. 

"He's been under a lot of stress, and honestly, he really hates them."

"I thought there weren't any here during the war," Ray said, "or even before that."

"There weren't, but his younger brother had... certain political affiliations and left the planet a few years ago."

"Maquis?" Yang guessed. 

"That's what we all think. No one's heard from him since the Dominion showed up and cleaned them out of the demilitarized zone. Zane still hopes he's in a prison camp somewhere, but with those all liberated no one else really believes it anymore." 

"I understand. Still, I'll check it out."

"You really don't have to humor him."

Yang shrugged slightly. "I'm not much use for the science, but I can help keep the peace by making the gesture. If you could coordinate with Commander Sevar about where to put the science teams, Mr. Person and I will go check that out."

Well, it wouldn't be the first wild goose chase or distraction mission that's Ray's been sent on. At least the weather was nice and the gravity was reasonable. 

"You're from an agricultural area, aren't you, Mr. Person?" Yang asked as they walked through the fields. "Along the Missouri River?"

Ray nodded. "State of Missouri, ma'am, but we're pretty far from the actual river."

"Specifically a Lutheran luddite community? Missouri Egalitarian Synod."

"Yeah, that's right," Ray said, shooting her a shocked glance. 

"Do you still practice your faith?"

"I'm in space, ma'am."

"I understand that's more of a lifestyle than doctrinal issue."

He chuckled. "Sorta. But nah, it's mostly a cultural thing on my part. Me and Brad have that in common."

"A Scandinavian orphan adopted by Californian Jews and raised on Vulcan in a traditional learning center. He must be a very interesting man." Yang smiled as he gave her an even more incredulous look. "I like to know about my bridge crew and department leads. Really, reciting a few biographical details isn't that impressive."

"You should tell that to my other COs," Ray said. "I'm pretty sure a couple only considered me a piece of self-deploying equipment."

"Is that how your husband thinks of you?"

"My other captains and commanders," Ray amended. "Nate's different. I mean, he thought I was Episcopalian for a while, but that's closer than most people get. A lot of them don't realize there's more than Catholic and Mormon."

"There's over thirty thousand religions in the Federation alone. It's a lot to keep track of."

"Oh, I know. Personally, I'm thinking of converting to whatever the hell the Bajorans call their prophet-worshipping. Jesus saves, but the Emissary makes fleets disappear, and that's a bit more practical in my line of work."

They reached the end of the field, right about where the line of desolation ended. Or was it decimation? Deforestation? A lot of the grass there did seem to be trampled down quite a bit. 

"There's a hole here," Yang said, kneeling down next to one trestle, which was cracked with age and holding up dry, withered vines. 

Ray crouched next to her. "Looks like someone took a soil sample." He gestured at the vines. "Some of this had been cut too."

"Still think it could be teenagers?"

"Maybe. I'd tell you about the time I set a soybean field on fire while trying to get laid, but Nate doesn't like it when I talk dirty around officers." He looked down the line of death. "This might be a bit higher level of teenage screwup than even I could have managed."

"It looks like they walked this way." Yang started leading the way toward a nearby rocky hill, not quite steep enough to really call an outcropping but something close. Nate would probably know the correct terminology. 

"Hold up," Ray said after a couple minutes. They were close to the hill and there was a small spring running away from it. In the mushy, muddy soil was a footprint. 

"That doesn't look right for the kind of boots I've seen the colonists wearing," Yang observed. 

Ray shook his head. "It's not Cardassian, though."

"You can tell?"

"The tread's all wrong. It's too bad Pappy's not here. He could tell you exactly where this came from. Between you and me, I'm pretty sure he and his wife have some kind of shoe fetish thing going on." Ray glanced up and felt his face heat. "I mean. Ma'am. He's got a lot of recon experience."

"Understood, Mr. Person," she replied dryly. 

The trail disappeared near a rock face. Ray pulled out his tricoder and did a few scans, but nothing came up. 

"Nadda. Maybe they beamed away?"

"We can have the ship do a scan from orbit," Yang said. 

"Hold up, I've got an idea." Ray took a few steps back and drew his phaser. He adjusted the beam setting and fired it at the rock, sweeping the beam slowly along the surface. After a couple seconds it hit something that shimmered and fizzled away, revealing a narrow passage leading in and downward. 

"A holographic duck blind," Yang said with a scowl. She tapped her communicator. "Yang to Zephyr."

_"Go ahead, Captain,"_ Nate replied. 

"Beam down a security team to my location."

_"They'll be there in five."_

Yang pulled out her own phaser and nodded into the passage. "Let's go."

"We're not waiting?" he asked as he followed her in.

"Let's not give whoever it is more time to escape, or worse use whatever they're doing to the colony against us."

God save Ray from over-eager officers. Even Nate could get a little wild-eyed about going after an objective, which was fine when that objective was Ray's dick and less so when it was whatever latest dangerous situation he'd decided that he personally needed to take care of instead of delegating like a normal pip-wearing assfuck. 

The lighting inside was dim, and Ray's tricorder was fucking useless because it kept saying they were surrounded by solid rock. He'd like to see how they managed that trick even when they were inside, but he'd also rather do that in the company of Brad and a bunch of suitably burly meatshields. 

They cautiously entered a roughly square chamber. It's ceiling was higher than the initial passage, maybe four meters up, but it was all hewn from the native rock and only barely polished down. There were just a few generic tables and chairs set up in two neat rows. Three open doors led off it, one in each wall. 

The one to the left led to what might have been a laboratory at one time. There was a long lab bench in the center and computers along each wall, plus another mostly-closed door at the rear. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and burning plastics, thanks to the fact that someone had clearly been taking a disruptor to all the equipment. Most of it was charred and melted junk, save for a few generic glass containers and the like that hadn't been destroyed yet. 

"Looks like whoever's here has been cleaning up," Yang said, observing the smoldering consoles with frustration. "We're not getting much out of those."

"Maybe, maybe not." Ray holstered his phaser and tricorder and got down on one knee. He picked through some of the debris. It was still slightly warm to the touch. He found a couple rectangular isolinear chips that were mostly intact and handed one to the captain. "Definitely not Cardassian."

"Because they use rods?" Yang asked, turning the slightly charred object in her hands.

"That too, but you feel that grain? It's from the doping process they use making the chips. I'd say Romulan."

"Romulans? Here? Even counting the worlds they annexed from the Cardassians, we're a hundred light-years from their nearest border."

"You can give 'em to Fitz to analyze, but he'll tell you the same thing. They're probably too heat damaged to get any data off of, but we may be able to trace the serials." Ray stopped as he noticed a slight shift in the shadows behind the rear door. He'd gotten soft in the last eight months. Back in the day he'd have checked those immediately. "Captain!"

Three Romulans burst through the door and started throwing punches. 

The first rule about hand-to-hand combat for someone like Ray was to never get into fucking hand-to-hand combat. Being small but scrappy only went so far; someone with more reach and more muscle was going to win eighty percent of the time. Starfleet provided three sizes of phaser for a reason. There was never an excuse not to have at least one. Shoot the fuckers before they got close enough to punch you. 

Regrettably, once in a melee, phasers became more of a hindrance than a help.

That lead to the second rule of hand-to-hand combat. If you couldn't bring a gun to a fistfight, bring a knife instead. Ray had several of those and one was in his hand in an instant. Knife fights were brutal and ugly affairs that rarely let you get away unscathed, but it was better than being unarmed, especially when your best friend gave you ones coated with paralysing dendrotoxin.

The third rule wasn't so much a rule as a helpful tip. Find a big-ass opponent willing to take a lot of time out of his days to teach you suus manah, the fancy Vulcan martial arts style that emphasized speed and precision. 

The first Romulan went down screaming with Ray's fingers clamped at the junction of his neck and shoulder. He'd never managed a perfect nerve pinch but it turned out that 'close enough' could still disable someone long enough for you to knife them in the gut. Yang got another right in the face with a crazy roundhouse kick. Ray's other knife slipped from its wrist holster as he twisted around and threw it into a third as she tried to draw down on the captain. That gave them the breathing room needed to duck behind cover and start having a phaser fight like civilized people as more Romulans appeared at the entrance.

"Yang to Zephyr," the captain shouted. "We need backup!"

After a few seconds, Nate replied, _"We can't get a lock on your area, Captain. We're beaming security down as close as we can."_

Ray shot a Romulan as she peaked around the doorframe. "Hey, cap'n!"

"Warrant?"

"I don't think these guys are regulars!"

"Why's that?"

"Their aim's crap, and they're not sending in Remans to act as beam sponges!"

"Thank you for your tactical assessment, Warrant Officer!"

The shooting stopped, mostly because the Romulans ceased being stupid enough to get close to the door. A man's voice called out, "Captain Yang, I presume? May I suggest a cease fire?"

"If you don't come in here, we won't shoot you," Yang replied. "Does that work?"

"Not exactly. I'm Subcommander D'Tok. I've sorry about this terribly unfortunate misunderstanding. It appears several of my people are bleeding to death in there. I'd like to send in medics."

"If you'll surrender to my security teams and shut down your sensor mask, then we can beam them into our sickbay in no time."

"Very well. We're going to lay down our weapons. Please instruct your men not to shoot us."

That was surprisingly reasonable for a Romulan. He had to be up to something. 

When Brad's team finally got their asses in gear and stormed into the outer chamber, five Romulans were lined up kneeling in the center with their hands behind their heads. The head honcho, a lithe man with sharp, angular features, told Ray how to shut down the facility's cloaking system. He got that taken care of and after a few detours around the other rooms got back to the captain. By that time, D'Tok was sitting at one of the tables across from Yang, while the rest of his people were being handcuffed or beamed up to sickbay.

"They destroyed pretty much all the equipment except life support and the fusion reactor," Ray reported. "At a guess, I'd say there used to be a sensor array and a bunch of computing equipment, plus the lab stuff."

"As I said, this is all a misunderstanding," D'Tok told them with a smile. "You see, this outpost was established during the war, while the Dominion occupied the planet, so that we could monitor the area."

"That seems like it'd be before the Romulans joined the war," Yang pointed out. 

"Obviously, we were very concerned about the conflict. Our suspicions turned out to well warranted, given that the Dominion was planning to eventually attack us as well."

"So why's it still here, and why haven't we heard about it until now? We're supposed to be allies."

D'Tok spread his hands wide. "I'm afraid you'll have to ask Naval Intelligence. I'm simply a physicist. This was a wartime posting for me. I was told to maintain the equipment and relay information, and so I did. I wouldn't be surprised if Admiral Tellock intended to inform you all, as he was killed during the final assault on Cardassia. For all I know, his successor doesn't even know we're here to issue the recall order."

"What about these anomalies the colony's been experiencing?"

"Fascinating, aren't they? I'm afraid I have no idea. Your engineers can confirm that we don't have anything that could cause these sort of temporal displacements."

Yang's expression narrowed. "Master Sergeant, please escort our friends to secure guest quarters and make them comfortable. Subcommander, I'll contact the joint occupation staff and see if they can put us in touch with your superiors. Hopefully we can release you into their custody."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Pardon my language, ma'am, but that was a lot of bullshit," Ray said once the Romulan was gone. "This has been here longer than two years."

"I agree. I counted a total of ten people here. So why's there seating here in this common room for at least twice that many?"

"Yeah, there's a lot of extra bunks. Where'd the rest go?"

"I did find this." Ray held out a slightly charred but mostly intact PADD. "It's locked, but once we're back on the ship we can try to crack it."

"Well done, Ray. Take charge of cataloging the equipment and bring anything interesting back to the ship. Coordinate with Lt. Fitz on the analysis."

"Yes, ma'am." 

"And clean yourself up before Lt. Fick sees you."

"Huh?" Ray glanced down at himself and saw that his right arm was stained green. "Yeah, this uniform's definitely going in the recycler."

A few hours later, after Ray got to enjoy telling other people to get their hands dirty cleaning up melted crap, some arguing about Romulan data structures with the F-man, and lunch, Ray found himself in the uncomfortable position of being invited up to the command briefing room. This sort of thing had happened two or three times in the war, and it generally hadn't been a good sign. Especially not that one time old baldy had walked in on him giving his best impression of an English-accented Frenchman. 

"We have completed our analysis of temporal anomalies," Sevar said, standing beside a large screen at the side of the room. "The effects are consistent with exposure to high-intensity tachyon pulses."

"We found some glitches in the planet's communications grid," Fitz added, "which helped us determine the locations of events outside the settlements. It's not comprehensive but it was enough to extrapolate a pattern."

"Backtracking the timing and paths of the events," Sevar continued, "allowed us to project directions for each, which taken together triangulate to a point near Carina VIII, the gas giant farthest from the star. Once we knew what to look for and tuned the main sensors, we were able to find a source of tachyons. It appears to be emitting pulses at a high frequency, but in a scattered area. Relatively few have actually intersected the planet."

"Is it a natural source?" Nate asked.

"No. A long-exposure scan found this." Sevar pressed a button. The resulting image was transparent in parts and bright in others, but the shape was recognizably an Excelsior-class starship. "Hull markings indicate this is USS _Jocelyn Burnell_. Records show it was lost during an exploration mission in this sector almost seventy years ago. It encountered a spatial anomaly and began phasing out of conventional space-time. The crew was forced to abandon ship and it disappeared."

"That's the official story, at any rate," Yang said, gesturing for Sevar to retake the seat at her right hand. "I contacted Starfleet Command. After a little runaround, Admiral Soltani managed to dig up the right records. The _Burnell_ was assigned to test a tachyon-based weapon. This location was chosen because at the time the system was uninhabited and far from rival powers. It suffered a catastrophic malfunction. This was shortly before the signing of the second Khitomer Accords, and when subspace weapons were banned, this project was also buried because it was felt it was too similar - and unreliable."

"A weapon?" Simmons said. "What good would this even do? Obviously the effects are terrible, but compared to a phaser it's not any more effective."

"I don't know about that," Nate said. "These tachyon pulses were going through the entire planet at times. That'd be pretty useful for hitting buried bunkers."

Ray nodded. "Get the dosage right and you could screw up someone's biology without really hurting the equipment around them."

There the geeks went looking appalled again.

"Whatever the uses," Yang said, "we need to clean up the mess it's making."

"The pulses do seem to be increasing in intensity and number," Sevar said. "We may soon be looking at a situation where the colony is experiencing constant and random changes in temporal speeds across the entire surface, leaving it uninhabitable. Fortunately, this appears to coincide with the ship phasing back into our space-time where we can access it."

Ray had that itchy feeling that command bullshit was rolling downhill in his direction. "I'm guessing this is not something we can solve with a photon torpedo."

Fitz shook his head rapidly. "Who knows what that would do. It might work, or it might make things worse. The best way to do it would be get aboard and find a way to shut the device down."

"Starfleet would prefer," Yang said, stressing the last word, "that we bring it back intact, along with a download of the ship's data recorder for study."

"Fortunately, we can adjust a runabout's shields to get in close," Fitz said. "The temporal effects should be much less noticeable once you're inside the _Burnell_."

"Where do the Romulans fit in?" Simmons asked. 

"Now that we're all buddy-buddy with the Romulans, I was able to look a few things up in their civilian data network," Ray said. "This T'Dok guy is a legit astrophysicist, with a specialty in tachyons and temporal physics. We recovered a few of his notes and suffice to say, it doesn't seem like he's here because he wanted to attend a wine tasting."

"Which is why Lt. Fick will be leading the away team," Yang said. "We have to assume there's a Romulan ship around here somewhere. It's the only explanation for why there's twenty-odd recently-used bunks and only ten actual people. This is a technical mission, so take Fitz and Person. Your top priority, after the safety of the civilian population, is making sure this tachyon weapon doesn't fall into their hands."

"Based on the rate of phase change," Sevar said, "the ship should be fully accessible by 0530 hours tomorrow. I suggest you be prepared to depart an hour before that to allow for flight time. It would be best if we didn't bring _Zephyr_ too close as our warp field might exacerbate the problem."

Yeah, command briefings were bullshit.

"Ray, you think everything is bullshit," Brad told them when they were off duty that evening, having reviewed all the relevant schematics and gotten all the unnecessary safety lectures. "In fact, I would go so far as to say that ninety percent of what comes out of your radiation-mutated inbred excuse for a mouth is bullshit."

Brad was at the dining table, very carefully reapplying toxins to Ray's knife, because apparently he could be trusted with billion-credit computer cores but not his own fucking weapons. Nate was in an armchair reading up on Romulans, while Ray sprawled on the couch and read everyone's mail. 

"Are you going to let him talk about your husband like that?" Ray demanded. 

"You're his too," Nate reminded him without even looking away from his PADD. 

Typical officer deflection. "Speaking of bullshit, have you seen this announcement?"

"We get a lot of announcements."

"Trombley's having a kid. A girl." Ray waited a beat, but no justifiable noises of outrage and despair ensued. "Do you think he'd name it, like, Rayina or something?"

"Traditionally, I think Raylene would be closer," Brad said, holding up the knife and carefully removing blood from the groove down the spine with a q-tip. "And no. Even he has better sense than that."

"Stafford's getting married, too. So's Chelle. And fucking Ensign Jarlax is budding! Did we start a trend? Is everyone getting married and/or knocked up? What happened to the glory days when Recon went out and whored around instead of settling down like normal people?"

"Ray, it has been over two years since you last experienced the tender touch of a professional sex worker," Brad said. "Since then, you've fucked precisely one person. You're almost as domesticated as Tony and Mike. The only thing missing is genetically backward spawn."

Ray sighed, because it was true. He was barely twenty-five and he was acting like one of those old geezers. "Hey, Walt got fast-tracked in the senior NCO course. Maybe the future isn't completely hopeless. No, wait, he's all lovey-dovey too." He started typing out a sternly worded letter of congratulations and mockery. 

It took him a few seconds to process the next message. He was about to forward it on to Counselor Nian, who was acting public affairs officer since in typical _Zephyr_ fashion the ship lacked one at the moment, then he realized this was a prime opportunity. 

"Computer, begin recording. Hey, everyone, it's your adventurous Ray-Ray here, broadcasting to you from the smoldering remains of what used to be the Cardassian Empire. I got your question about what Starfleet is like, and so I'll do my best to answer."

Brad and Nate looked up with almost-identical confused expressions. It was adorable how in-synch they got when confronted with the unexpected. Or the expected, for that matter. 

"Here's what you need to understand. Starfleet as a whole is, let's face it, composed entirely of overachieving assholes. Sure, some of the parts that just stay in one place on a space station or something aren't always so bad, but the ones that move around are just insufferable. The point of Starfleet isn't really the exploration or defense missions, which could be done with robots. It's to get all of us away from Earth and the other core worlds so everyone else can live their mediocre lives in peace."

"I'm not sure I agree with this thesis," Nate said dryly, "but go on."

"Now, Starfleet Rangers are overachievers at something other than science or engineering. We're the absolute best in the galaxy at killing things. Don't believe me? Look at our enemies. The Cardassians are a bunch of fascist pricks, but in twenty years of flailing at us all they managed to do was ruin their economy and get their dictatorship overthrown. Ninety-nine percent of the Federation never even realized there was a conflict happening. The Klingons never committed to more than a few border skirmishes during their hissy fit, because the last time we had a real war we gave them a bloody nose. Even the Jem'hadar, who literally fight all their lives, can't quite handle our combination of lethal combat skills and mad science."

Brad's frown deepened. "What are you even recording this for?"

"We got this letter from fourth graders in Kansas City, asking about what Starfleet is and who we are, help them with nightmares about being bombed by the Breen, blah blah blah."

There was a long pause before Nate asked, "Why would you be answering it?"

"It was addressed to the comms officer and it's from my hellhole of a home state, so I figured why not?"

"Brad, please take that PADD from him before the captain spaces us."

"Nah, it'll be fine, I'll edit it before I actually send anything back."

"Hand it over, Ray," Brad said, getting out of his chair and advancing on him.

"Nope. You're not my boss anymore, Brad, you can't tell me to do shit." He climbed over the back of the couch, then dodged around Nate as he came the other way. "You too, LT. You made me a technical specialist, now you have to suffer the consequences."

Nate managed to snag the back of Ray's shirt. Brad vaulted over the couch, because that was definitely a normal thing to do over a joke. There was a bit of tussling, Ray managed to actually get a leg sweep in on his oversized opponent, and the predictable-in-hindsight consequence was that Brad dragged everyone down with him.

"This is spousal abuse," Ray shouted from the bottom of the resulting pile. He tried to wiggle away, only to find himself pinned firmly down by Brad. Nate started to pry the PADD from his fingers, so thinking fast Ray kissed Brad square on the lips. Startled, he jerked back, knocking Nate aside in the process, and Ray was free to scramble away and lock himself safely in the nearby bathroom.

It took a few seconds to realize that maybe he had just fucked up.

When Ray cautiously opened the door, Brad was sitting on the floor, in maximum grumpy cat mode. Nate was laying next to him, eyes red and watery. It took Ray a few heart-stopping moments to realize those were tears of laughter.

"We're going," Nate said, pausing every few words to catch his breath, "to have to add that technique to the escape and evasion manual."

The tension flowed out of Ray's body. "Homes, if that's all it takes to distract you, you've got a serious problem."

"I let you go," Brad insisted. "Solely because I didn't want your diseased slobber infecting me with whatever brain-eating amoebas you have."

"I ask again, are you going to stand for this?"

"It does sound like you're implying that I'm also the victim of some sort of sexually transmitted mental disability," Nate said, pushing himself into a sitting position. 

"To be frank, sir, I've been questioning your sanity for about two years now."

"Do you ever notice," Ray asked, "that he mainly calls you sir when he's sassing you?"

"I have. Is insanity really your honest assessment, Master Sergeant?"

Brad's lips quirked. "Have I ever been dishonest with you?"

"Well, in that case." Nate gently grasped Brad's chin and turned his head before leaning in for a sloppy kiss. Baller move, Ray definitely approved, and for more reasons than just the nice show he was getting. "Now you're infected too."

For a moment there it looked like maybe Brad was going to get a clue, but the moment passed. 

"Your technique needs work," Brad said. 

"I'm told you're an excellent instructor."

"You can already handle your weapon like an expert. I'm assured of this." Brad climbed to his feet and went back to his cleaning, leaving Nate a picture of frustration in his wake.

"Have your ever noticed," Ray said quietly to Nate as the two of them settled onto the couch together, "that you triple-dog dared us into a marriage of extreme inconvenience with the most frustrating man in the galaxy?"

"Two."

"What?"

"Two of the most frustrating men."

"Yeah, okay. I think all three of us could probably make that statement. Do you want to fuck so loudly tonight he can't help but overhear?"

"That's extremely petty, Ray, but I can't think of a reason not to."


	6. There's a Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an away mission, and Fitz comes along to earn his place on the character tags.

**Runabout Osage**  
Stardate 53317.5

"I'm leaving on a spaceplane!" Ray caterwauled. "Don't know when I'll be back again!"

"Oh babe," Nate continued, with much better tune if not content, "I hate to go."

"What. The. _Hell_?" Lt. Fitz said to Brad. "Are they even singing?"

"Just be glad it's not country, sir," Brad replied. 

Brad was once more trapped in a shaking tin can with people who had no musical taste whatsoever. Nate might have been salvageable at one point, but his brain had slowly been rotted away due to over-exposure to Ray. Even with Walt gone off to whatever the fuck he was up to, there were still too many horrible affronts to human culture in Brad's life. 

"Country? What does that mean?"

"Country is one of the traditional folk styles of my people," Ray said, tipping his head back in a way that made the runabout's lights glint off his ridiculous shades. "Brad hates it for reasons that he's unable to explain without sounding like the elitist snob he is at heart. I'll admit, there was a long period where it was subverted by the minions of patriotic authoritarian capitalism, but it returned to its rebel cowboy roots eventually."

Brad scowled at him. "It's mostly songs about being so sad and lonely after getting dumped that you want to fuck your vehicle."

"Don't forget the revenge ballads."

"A lot of it's actually very similar to traditional Scottish folk music," Nate said. "If you go back far enough, they're derived from the same roots."

"Eh, I don't know about that. Isn't that more of a bluegrass sort of thing?" Ray asked. The entire runabout shook and lurched upwards as a wave of time-space bullshit crashed into their shields. "Hah! That was a fun one!"

"Shouldn't you be concentrating on flying?" Fitz demanded, clutching the arms of his chair. 

"I am concentrating. But hey, if you want me to concentrate more, tell Brad to let me at the neophetamines. He cut me off a long time ago, said they made me too twitchy. Now I'm only allowed over-the-counter uppers unless we're going into really serious shit, and apparently this doesn't qualify."

"If you think he's insufferable now, multiply that by a hundred," Brad said. More importantly, he'd spent a couple weeks looking like he was either going to stroke out or have a heart attack any moment before Brad had put his foot down and conspired with Doc to lock down Ray's pharmacy access.

"You're an acting division head!" Fitz protested. "He's just enlisted!"

"Oh, shit, son, don't say that," Ray said over Fitz.

"You don't have to do a thing he says anymore!"

"Two quick things, lieutenant," Nate said, looking over his shoulder to grin at Fitz. "First, if a good NCO suggests something, it's usually best to go along with it. It makes life much smoother. Second, I don't think any of us would like to see what happens if Ray really did slip Brad's reins sometime."

"The trick is separating the good NCOs from the shitty ones," Ray added. "I was a good one, during my brief tenure. Brad, he's kind of an asshole, in case you haven't noticed, but he does know what he's doing."

Fitz looked at Brad. He swallowed, possibly remembering their ongoing appointments to fix his deficiencies in self-defense. "I didn't mean anything by it, Sergeant."

Brad grinned toothily. "I won't take it personally, sir."

"Why _do_ I do what you tell me anymore?" Ray wondered. "I mean, seriously. We're basically equals in rank, since no one actually knows what the fuck a warrant officer is. We're married, so we're social equals. It makes no sense. Hold on."

The ship rocked again.

"Maybe you're just the bitch of this relationship?" Brad suggested. Given the noises that had been coming out of their room the previous night after someone had 'accidentally' left a boot in the door, it certainly seemed likely.

"Bradley, I am disappointed in your use of gendered slurs. What must young Lt. Fitz think of you? And if I'm the bitch for doing what you say, what's that make you for doing what Nate says?"

"He's still my superior when we're on duty."

"That doesn't explain it the rest of the time. Huh."

"Huh?" Nate repeated. 

"We're going to have to use one of the airlocks. Looks like the main shuttlebay is full."

"The logs said the _Burnell_ 's crew took all of them."

"I'm not talking about their shuttles." Ray pointed at the growing shape of the Excelsior-class ship ahead of them. It was rimmed with a white glow, but now that Brad looked closer, a curved green ship with a beaked nose was sitting in the middle of the bay. "Looks like someone else got here first."

"That's not unexpected," Nate said. "Starboard docking port, then. Be sure to scan for any signs of explosives before we latch on."

"Aye, sir."

There was a flash from the front of the ship's drive section, where the main deflector lived, but this time the shock was much less. In fact, the low-level vibration they'd been getting the last thousand klicks was dying away as well. As predicted, once they got in close to the source of the tachyon pulses, the worst of it was aimed away from them. The shocks were gone entirely by the time the runabout nestled up against the side of the ship's belly. 

"We're either good or about to die from a well-camouflaged mine," Ray reported as the airlock seals snapped into place. 

"Sure you don't want a rifle?" Brad asked Fitz as they all stood up. He had his long gun, while Nate and Ray still favored their more compact models. 

"Be realistic, Sergeant," Fitz replied. "We both know I have enough trouble with a hand phaser. Let's leave that for another month so I don't shoot myself by accident."

"Alright. Just stick close to us and you'll be fine. We've done plenty of these escort missions."

"We've even brought the escortee back most of the time," Ray added cheerfully. 

"Lt. Fitz, since you'll have a hand free, you're on tricorder duty," Nate said, brushing past them. "Brad, take point, we'll watch the flanks."

They fell into formation like they hadn't missed a day, much less nearly eight months. There was a vague sense of annoyance from not having his six properly covered; normally there'd be someone there from the rest of the company command squad, if not Walt or Trombley then one of Nate's boys. It was hardly the first time the three of them had been on an op alone, though, or as the case might be alone except whoever they were inserting, extracting, or otherwise moving from place A to B. As glad as Brad was that Ray was doing something a bit safer these days, he had to admit he missed having the man at his side in a fight.

The ship's layout and appearance was pretty familiar. There hadn't been a lot of change of interior design philosophy between when this ship had been built and many of those he'd spent his time aboard. The _Mathilda_ had been maybe ten years newer, discounting the time bullshit. The lights were on and the air circulating, although occasionally they'd run into sections where pipes had burst or electrical systems shorted.

They came to the starboard access companionway, only to find chunks of the stairs missing and other parts rusted or hanging loose. 

"Fitz?" Nate asked.

"There's significant metal fatigue," Fitz said, holding out his tricorder. "Most of doesn't seem recent, though. If this just happened, we should be seeing more latent heat."

"I thought most of the time stuff was supposed to happen outside the ship," Brad said. 

"It is. This is just from backscatter off the main deflector. If it were as intense as outside, this would be dust. Most of the saucer section's probably a mess, though. It's much more exposed to the beam's side lobes."

"Let's try to port stairs, then," Nate said. "How likely are we to run into something like that?"

"Well, given the frequency of the tachyon pulses, and how large the individual beams on this side would be… very small. Maybe one percent over the course of an hour?"

"That's it?" Ray asked. "Don't you engineers like to run out the probabilities to a bunch of decimal places?"

"You're lucky to have one significant figure. I'm estimating. It'd probably be survivable anyways, they're mostly pencil-thin this close, before they have a chance to spread out. Unless it hit your head or heart or something else vital."

"Excellent advice, sir," Brad said. "Avoid running into the invisible death rays with my head. I'm glad to have an officer around to tell me that."

"Are infantry sergeants always like this?" Fitz asked.

"To your face?" Nate replied. "Not usually, no. He must like you."

"It's probably his adorable harmless puppy-dog look," Ray said. "A lot like you were, before all the killing and death and so on. Brad can't help but feel affectionate and protective. Give him time, Fitz, and he'll hate you like he does all other officers."

"I don't hate all of them," Brad said as he reached the alternate ladder and they started to climb. "Patterson was great."

"Until he got promoted, then you hated him."

"Ensign Jarlax."

"You two made Poke their platoon sergeant, you must have had something against them."

"Lt. Foxworthy was a fine soldier and tactician."

"You know, maybe you did like her - right up until she disagreed with you about which version of the Blueforce tracker was best, and then it was all downhill." Ray paused briefly as he checked an open door. "Also, you made _Walt_ her sergeant, and let's face it, giving someone an NCO you can't say no to because of his sad puppy face is mean."

"Do Recon troopers always talk this much?" Fitz asked. 

"You think this is bad," Nate replied, "wait until they start to gossip."

"What happened to swift and silent?"

"They have to fit all the talking they don't do then into the chances they do get." Nate frowned and signaled a stop as they reached a cross corridor. He motioned them to either side of it.

A moment later, Brad heard what he must have: the sound of dragging footsteps coming the opposite direction. Twenty meters away, in a corridor that mirrored their own across the ship's centerline, a pair of Romulans limped past. One was supporting the other, whose left arm was horribly blackened and twisted. 

"I've going to revise my previous instruction," Fitz said once the Romulans were long gone and Nate nodded for them to start moving again. "Don't touch the death rays at all."

The continued a little faster this time, pausing one more time as they neared the front of the stardrive section when Fitz suddenly stopped in this tracks, his tricoder bleeping wildly. For no apparent reason, one of the overhead lights went out and a floor panel popped free. 

They took a left and came to the entrance of main engineering. Brad carefully peered inside. The room itself was maybe ten meters wide and three times that long, roughly t-shaped thanks to two short extensions at the far end where the pulsing warp core was. Computer consoles lined the side walls. Toward the middle, where most ships had some kind of display table, was a hexagonal device of some kind, about the height and width of a person. It was hooked to the floor with a bunch of sturdy frames and a bundle of cables. That was probably the tachyon generator.

Standing beside the device were three Romulans, holding scanners and examining it. Beyond them, about halfway between it and the warp core, were six more. They appeared to be arguing about something, with repeated gestured to the device and the reactor. 

"Not much cover," Brad signed to the others. 

"We need to take them all at once if we can," Nate replied. "Ray, stay here with Fitz. Brad and I will loop around the forward corridor so we can reach the other side of the door."

"Side entrance to port?" Ray suggested. 

Nate shook his head. "They're too close to it, they'd spot us for sure. Just have to make our shots count."

"I don't know what you're saying," Fitz whispered, barely audible, "but having heard from Jemma about your last boarding mission, I want to say no grenades."

They all pulled back a little so he could participate. Nate asked, "Is there any way to shut down the device from anywhere else?"

Fitz shook his head. "No. It's tied directly into the main power bus, on the line leading forward to the deflector. The test crew couldn't get it to turned off because once it was charged, trying to decrease the power flow caused instability in the tachyon creation matrix. We have to safe the device itself first."

"Okay. We'll do this the hard way, then. Fitz, start shooting when Ray does. I don't need you to hit much, just stay clear of anything that might explode. Covering fire will help the rest of us take the bad guys out."

Nate and Brad headed back to the main corridor and headed further forward. The hall curved as it tracked the exterior shape of the hull. The closer they got to the front of the stardrive section, the more obvious the damage was. Random bits of wall were faded or decayed, lights were sparking, and at one point there was water dripping from somewhere overhead. 

"I think we're in front of the deflector now," Nate said as they hurried along. 

Brad nodded. "It's a good thing Starfleet only wants this weapon of theirs. If the ship's like this here, how much worse is it toward the bow?"

They got back to the engine room without injuring themselves, although Brad didn't want to think about whether they'd had any narrow misses without even realizing it. They took a moment to recheck that the Romulans hadn't moved around too much, counted down, and then popped around the door. 

Their first shots caught the three nearest the entrance. Brad would give the other Romulans this, they had good reflexes. As soon as the firing started, the six still up bolted for cover near the rear of the engine room. Nate got one in the back. Brad took that momentary opportunity to race forward to a side alcove about a third of the way in, which lead to the ship's maintenance tubes and gave him a reasonably view of both the core area and the side entrance located back there. Then the Romulans started actually shooting back. 

"There is a temporal weapon and a warp core right there!" Fitz shouted over the whine of phaser and disruptor beams. "If either get hit, the ship will explode and probably take the planet with it!"

"Tell that to Romulans," Brad retorted. He took very careful aim and fired a shot that narrowly missed the core and stuck a Romulan center of mass. There were maybe four left still standing, either inside the core area or alcoves on either side. He liked those odds, although he liked relying on the aim of the Romulans a lot less.

"He does have a point. Hold fire," Nate said. "Hey! Romulan commander! Can we discuss a way to settle this without violence? Maybe we can both get what we want."

A minute passed without more shooting, before a woman stepped out. It was hard to tell, but Brad's experience with Vulcans suggested she was fairly young, probably not much older than Nate is relative terms. Her dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun. 

"Let us speak face to face, then," she said, walking forward until she was even with the tachyon generator. She holstered her disruptor pistol. 

Naturally, Nate echoed her, because he had no fucking common sense. "I'm Lieutenant Fick. USS _Zephyr_."

"Subcommander Telleria, IRW Hawkwing." The ship shuddered slightly. "We should speak quickly. I'm afraid that regardless of whether our goals are compatible, we won't have long to achieve them."

"My orders are to turn this thing off to prevent harm to the locals, bring it back if possible, and prevent it from being captured by anyone else."

"Unfortunate. Mine are to retrieve the device, and prevent Starfleet from recovering a weapon of mass destruction aimed at the Romulan people."

"It's not aimed at anyone, least of all our allies."

"That's what you would say, isn't it?"

A display panel a few feet away from Nate suddenly cracked. "Can we start with turning it off? No one's going to retrieve anything if it kills us."

"That would be agreeable."

"Fitz!" Nate called over his shoulder. "Person! You're up."

"Stay out of my line of fire," Brad hissed as Ray slung his rifle over his shoulder and started forward. 

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Your man seems rather intent on shooting me, Lieutenant," Telleria said to Nate.

"I could say the same about that uhlan behind the environmental controls."

Ray took a seat at the chief engineer's master situation terminal, while Fitz began scanning the device itself. The former was very careful to go around the Romulan commander's back; the latter kept stepping in the way. Nate wasn't helping much either, although the subcommander was between him and her own men, so it evened out a little.

"The ship's computer shows it as stardate 86534.2," Ray reported. "Zero-eight, that is."

"I suspected as much," Telleria said, without looking away from Nate. "The tachyon overload that caused the ship to experience an interphase shift would also have caused considerable time dilation. It's probably only been a few hours from its perspective."

"It's still drawing power from the warp core," Fitz said. "And charging up again. It'll probably experience another criticality event in less than an hour. Only this time, with all the damage to the ship, the deflector will shatter, release all the built-up particles at once, and flood the system with tachyons."

"I don't know if we've got an hour," Ray said. "I'm not an expert on antimatter containment, but I'm pretty sure all this indicators shouldn't be this fucking red."

"Right," Fitz said, stroking his chin nervously. "The containment fields would protect the storage pods and warp core themselves, but the support casings and equipment is still being damaged randomly."

"If the core blows, does that remove the problem? Cause I've got a detpack, we could just slap it on the reactor and get the hell out of here."

"Maybe. Or maybe the huge gamma-ray pulse will supercharge the tertracobalt matrix in the instant before it's destroyed, causing a rip in space-time the size of a planet."

"I would expect the latter," Telleria said. "The radiation from the initial matter-antimatter reaction will arrive slightly before the shockwave, not that we'll notice."

"Can we eject the core or antimatter pods?" Nate asked. 

"No, that's the same problem the original crew ran into," Fitz said. "Suddenly cutting power will destabilize the matrix and it'll go off. That's assuming the explosive bolts aren't aged so much they just send shrapnel into the pods." He got out a multitool and started unscrewing a panel on the device's side. Once it was off, he pulled a cylinder from his belt and attached a long, thin hose to a valve on top. "Fortunately, we've learned a few things about subspace-active isotopes since the 2310s. All I need to do is inject this stabilizing agent directly into the tachyon matrix. Then we just cut power at the right moment and it'll cool off. Unless we cut it at the wrong moment, then it might just explode like a regular bomb."

"I'm not touching anything until you tell me to," Ray said. 

"Are you using a beryllium or iridium base for the stabilizer?" Telleria asked. 

"Actually, it's a mix of -" Fitz started.

"Fitz," Nate said, firm without raising his voice. 

"Oh. Right." Fitz shrugged and said to the Romulan, "Sorry."

"Quite alright."

Part of Brad would like to think that Nate was never at a point where he would have apologized for not spilling secrets to someone who had just been shooting at him, except another part was pretty sure he still would. He was a very polite ruthless killing machine. 

On that note, Brad called out, "Subcommander, would you tell that soldier moving toward the side exit to stop?"

She turned her head. "Centurion, we're having a dialogue here. Please don't get me shot, mother would be very cross." To Nate, she added, "Enlisted men. What can you do?"

Nate nodded. "I understand the feeling, ma'am. If you don't mind me asking, why are you here?"

"Personally? The Hawkwing's fitted out for scientific missions, to expand the Empire's knowledge. Much like your own ship supposedly is, no doubt. We were closest when our listening post noticed the unusual readings, and I was sent over because of my expertise with quantum singularities and related space-time physics. Yourself?"

"I meant more of what you're hoping to accomplish, but to answer you question, I'm an expert at removing intruders."

Telleria laughed. "And people assume we're the violent ones. Lt. Fitz, is it? Have you accounted for the decrease in temperature as your stabilizer compound expands?"

"Yes, I've accounted for it," Fitz replied, arm deep inside the machine and attaching the hose to something inside by feel. "I have a doctorate, I think I understand second-grade chemistry."

"My apologies. That would make you the Leopold Fitz who graduated from Starfleet Academy in 2374? I read your thesis on reciprocal warp fields. Very enlightening."

Fitz looked like he didn't know whether to be appalled or delighted by this revelation. "Why do you know who I am?"

"Focus on the job, Fitz," Nate said. "As I was saying, ma'am? Your policy goals here?"

"Starfleet was developing a devastatingly powerful weapon. You can't blame your neighbors for wanting it themselves, in order to maintain the balance of power."

" _Was_ developing. We've had the schematics for sixty years and haven't done anything with them. From that perspective, it's already built into that balance."

"Retrieving the device and the ship's logs may provide information necessary to turn it from a failure into a practical reality."

"I'd like to think that the experiences of the last two years would have earned a little trust between our nations."

"If it were up to me, I'd agree. Friendship with the Federation would be great strategic boon and allow us to concentrate on our other borders. Unfortunately, many in the high command are old men and women who have thought of humans as enemies their entire lives. They lack... vision. But they also give the orders."

"Mr. Person, prepare to cut the power," Fitz said quietly. "I'm going to count from three."

"Do we go on one, or go on zero?," Ray asked. 

"On zero! Three, two, one, now!"

There was a loud hiss and Fitz jumped back as a cloud of cold fog came spraying out of the device. Neither Nate nor Telleria flinched as it briefly pooled around their boots and slowly dissipated across the floor.. 

"Okay. Good. Looks like that went well," Fitz said. Behind him, Ray used the distraction to surreptitiously remove something from the engineering console and palm it. 

"Out of the way," he said, taking Fitz by the shoulder and tugging him back toward the entrance. 

"Fitz," Nate called, without looking away from the Romulan. Brad's finger slowly curled around the trigger of his rifle as he considered who to shoot first, one of the soldiers in the rear or the subcommander. "How long will it take before it's safe to remove this thing?"

"Well, it's safe now," Fitz replied. "There's still some tachyons built up in the deflector that will take a while to finish discharging, but the device itself is powered down completely. The problem will be detaching it from the main EPS bus. We'll need to shut down the reactor and de-energize the line. It'll take at least thirty minutes before we can start unbolting things."

"Thanks." Lighting-fast, Nate drew his phaser, thumbing the power up as he did, and shot the tachyon generator. A shower of sparks exploded out and pieces went flying away from the opposite side. "Back to the status quo, Subcommander."

Telleria stood there for a long moment, her own weapon half out of its holster, before she started laughing and put it back. "What an elegant solution. Are you sure you're not Romulan, Lieutenant?"

A long shudder ran through the deck and the lights flickered. The warp core suddenly stopped pulsing and a shrill alarm began trilling. The computer announced, _"Warning. Antimatter containment system critical. Evacuate immediately."_

Fitz pulled his tricorder out and shouted, "The deflector's releasing all the remaining tachyons at once! We need to get out of here!"

"You said it was safe," Ray shouted back. 

"To remove the device, not blow it up!"

"Back to the shuttle!" Telleria called to her men. The ones in the rear started lifting up their fallen comrades. Nate opened his mouth, but Brad knew what nonsense was going to come out next, and so he was already out in the open and picking up one of the Romulan technicians. Nate hefted another into a fireman's carry, while Telleria did the same with a third. 

"Our runabout is closer," Nate told the subcommander. 

"Thank you," she replied, "but I'm not returning to my ship in a Starfleet vessel. I'll call the pilots to meet us halfway to help with the wounded."

They all exited into the corridor and slowly made their way around a couple bends to the long axial corridor that ran from engineering all the way back to the rear shuttlebay. They didn't get too far, because after another long shake there was a sudden crack and a screaming rush of air down the corridor. A safety bulkhead slammed shut a few dozen meters ahead.

"On second thought," Telleria said, "your hospitality would be appreciated."

"Run ahead and get the ship ready," Nate told Ray

"Aye, sir," Ray said. "Yet another hasty dustoff, coming up." 

He sprinted off. The rest of them reached the stairwell a minute later. Fitz scrambled down first. They followed one by one, easing their way down the steep stairs. Brad took up the rear, for once without any argument from his officer. He was halfway down when the ship shook again. At the same time the upper half of the railing he was holding suddenly rusted and popped away from the wall, sending him tumbling to the landing below.

Naturally, the Romulan came down on top of him and not the other way around.

"Fuck!" Brad shouted. He was pretty sure he'd just popped his shoulder out of its socket again. "What do you feed these people?"

"I believe the human idiom is 'corn fed'," Telleria said, helping as he got first to his knees and then unsteadily to his feet, ungrateful, unconscious cargo still in place. 

"Human idioms are fucking nonsense." The entire left side of his back felt like it was on fire but he gritted his teeth and carried on as fast as he could toward the airlock. The ship continued to creak and groan around them. 

"Go, go, go!" Nate shouted as they entered the runabout. 

Ray didn't need to be told twice, or even wait for the inner door to completely shut. Seconds later there was a bang and a pop as the docking clamps were blown and the runabout sped away into open space. Brad lowered his cargo with the minimal necessary amount of care and flopped down into a chair. He briefly considered curling up in a ball on the floor instead so that at least he wouldn't be upright, but that was too fucking undignified. About a minute later there was a jolt as the ship behind them exploded, but by that point they were far enough way that it was barely a tap compared to the earlier turbulence.

"This is awkward," Ray said into the silence. 

"Is it?" Telleria said. 

"Our ship's approaching, so, you know, no funny business."

"Ray," Nate said tiredly. "Don't be rude to our allies."

"Can any of these other guys talk? Or is that not allowed?"

Ahead of them, a Romulan warbird shimmered into existence. Rather than blast them into their pain-free component atoms, it beamed the Romulans away in a swirl green light and fucked off again.

"We probably should have tried to take their tricorders," Brad said. 

"Who gives a shit?" Ray asked. "Do you? How about you, Nate? Fitz?"

"I am never going on an away mission again," Fitz declared. "Especially not with you absolute maniacs."

"By the way, guess who copied the engineering data recorder? That's right, me, right under their noses. Don't ever say I don't pay close attention to the mission parameters."

"Are you okay, Brad?" Nate said, eyeing him with an expression more suspicious than concerned.

"I'm fine."

"You're going straight to sickbay."

"You'll love this, Fitz," Ray said. "You've never seen anything like the silent bitchfests that Brad throws when forced to receive medical care."

Brad's so-called bitchfest went unobserved. Ray and Nate were hauled off to talk to the Captain about that data log. In sickbay, Dr. Simmons was too busy fussing over Fitz's apparently scraped knuckles to attend to Brad's out-of-alignment spine, instead handing him off to a Betazoid nurse who scolded him for lying about how much pain he was in. 

Brad hated fucking non-Vulcan telepaths. None of them had any sense of boundaries.

Returning his gear was a fucking circus, because every little baby security crewman wanted to hear about what had happened and somehow managed to find their way into the armory. Brad would have said that he missed sane newbies like Christeson, except then he realized he was only thinking of the leaner, mature model and not the original dumbfuck version untested by war. 

It was possible that, by the time he got back to his quarters and down to a pair of exercise shorts and a t-shirt, Brad was in fact grumpy. At least dinner smelled good and recognizable.

"Don't ask me why it's called hamburger helper," Ray said as he sat plates full of some sort of pasta concoction on the table and dropped into his own chair. "I tried tracing the recipe books back but hit a dead end in the twenty-first. This planet has real cheese and I don't feel like taking the time for something fancy, so I thought it was a good chance to make some."

"This isn't actually cow meat, is it?" Nate asked, fork halfway to his mouth. 

"It's vat-grown, Jesus, I only kill people, not helpless animals. Except deer, those are delicious vermin."

"We've eaten worse in the field," Brad pointed out. 

Ray scowled at him. "If you compare my cooking to the children spitroasting random wildlife, I'm going to fucking divorce you."

"You can't get rid of me that easy anymore. I'm on the ship, I'm not going anywhere, and half of this room is technically mine."

"Oh, honey buns, you have no idea the kind of domestic intranquility I am capable of generating if my hard work gets scorned."

"I'm not sure what offends me more," Nate said. "Honey buns or intranquility."

"Don't you start too."

"There's got to be better terms of endearment."

"There are, but I'm trying not to repeat myself. It's actually kinda difficult, but luckily I don't have much need where Brad is concerned since he's such an asshole."

"I'm just trying not to stress your vocabulary, you illiterate goatfucker," Brad said. "However, in the interest of domestic harmony, I will be magnanimous and say this is actually surprisingly good."

"I'll take it," Ray said. "It's a shitty backhanded compliment, but it's still a step toward a good attitude, so I need to encourage him. That's something I got out the supervisor's manual."

Supervisor. While Ray wasn't looking, Brad shook his head, gave Nate a wry smile, and signed with one hand, "You have created a monster."

"You've got your own share of the blame," Nate replied aloud. 

"Are you two fuckers talking behind my back?"

"Does your mother know you speak like that at the dinner table?"

"You've been to my mom's place, what do you fucking thing?"

"I think that it's a miracle that your wretched hive of scum and villainy even uses utensils," Brad said. 

For dessert, Ray produced a tray of brownies, and while Brad wasn't an anti-replicator snob he did have to admit that there might be something going on as far as real chocolate went. He finished up by pouring three glasses of wine for them to carry over to the living room. Brad caught Nate watching him with narrow eyes as he eased himself into a chair.

"I figured since it's my turn to provide and we're orbiting a giant vineyard, this would be appropriate," Ray said. 

"Tell me you didn't scam this out of some poor colonist," Nate said, taking a small sip. 

"This? Nope," Ray replied. He smirked. "Although I did pick up a couple cases from the governor. To share with the rest of the crew, of course. No, since this was our first real, official mission as the crew of a starship, I broke out the Chateau Picard."

"Do I want to know how you got this?" Brad asked. It seemed pretty good, although that might just be the alcohol helping dull his senses slightly. 

"I wish I could say it was something nefarious, but honestly, my aunt got it for me through a traditionalist exchange network in trade for cider or some shit."

"You are a petty, petty man."

"And you love me for it."

"Love is an emotional and illogical reaction. I just find your companionship agreeable."

"How is that logical?"

Brad couldn't answer, because logically there was no explanation for anything involving him and Ray. Logic had little to do with him at all. 

"Brad," Nate said. For a brief moment he thought this was a rescue. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Why, are you having stomach trouble?"

"You look like you're in pain. How's your shoulder and back?"

"It's not painful, just stiff," Brad replied. "It'll be fine by morning."

"Or it'll be worse. Come on." Nate stood up and waved for Brad to follow him. Curious, Brad followed Nate into Brad's own bedroom. Nate pointed at the bed. "Shirt off, face down."

"I hope this isn't your idea of seduction," Brad said, even as he complied. "If so, don't expect it to work on anyone who wasn't raised in a town where everyone's a cousin."

"There's, like, thirty thousand of us in my county alone," said the cousin-fucker, ambling in with a PADD in hand and sitting down in the armchair Brad had in his room specifically for when he wanted some peace and quiet. "We're not any more interrelated than anywhere else."

Nate got up and straddled Brad's back. "You're lucky that I've been learning neuropressure massage to help with his PT."

"Who's been sharing Vulcan secrets with you?"

"Dr. T'son. She's much more forthcoming than you ever were."

Nate started to rhythmically knead the muscles of Brad's upper back, working his way out toward the shoulder. The pain started to subside almost immediately, even if Brad could tell the tension was still there, as the same nerve-pinching techniques that could flatten a man were used as an analgesic instead. 

"So I've been thinking, in the copious free time I've had today," Ray said, "about the fourth graders. Now, I fully understand that, due the requirements of our jacked-up professional standards and society's need to protect the minds of our innocent spawn, I can't actually give them a mature answer. But I figure, we can really do better than just a form letter."

"Who's we?" Nate asked. 

"Mostly myself, since I want this done right, but the rest of you lazy fuckers are going to pitch in too since this is to make the ship look good."

"I am not," Brad said, turning his head so he could look directly at Ray. Nate promptly turned it back. "Participating in whatever scheme you've come up with."

"Oh, bullshit. You love kids more than anyone I know."

"You know a bunch of guys with them."

"Who are in Starfleet and spent a lot of their shit- and vomit-spewing years safely away in deep space. I bet I could get you to dress up as a mascot if I promised it would make the little monsters happy."

"No such thing ever will or ever could occur."

"What do you think, Nate? A sehlat? Should we turn our dear companion into a big cuddly teddy bear?"

Brad didn't need to look to visualize the smirk on Nate's face. "I didn't think you were into bears."

"I could make an exception."

As the conversation continued, Brad closed his eyes and let himself relax. He was well used to tuning out Ray until his voice became a constant white noise as soothing as ocean waves. It wasn't the sort of meditation tool a proper Vulcan would approve of, but Brad had always been the weird one at school. The instructor who'd turned him from a teenage hooligan into a man would probably be amused, though. To use Ray's deplorable phrase, she was the sort of ancient mystic who was so old she'd gone past super-logical and wrapped around the other side. 

Similarly, logic and science told him that if he'd just taken the offered painkillers while waiting for the bone and muscle-knitting injections to finish their work, he could have been perfectly comfortable. Mere comfort didn't compare to the feel of Nate's hands manually working out all the knots one muscle group and nerve cluster at a time. Brad wasn't one to call things orgasmic unless they involved either orgasms or antimatter explosives, but the warm flow of endorphins and the comforting presence of another person could certainly compete with the afterglow.

"You better be careful, Nate," Brad murmured. "I might start expecting this."

"I do it for Ray, it's only fair I do it for you too."

The casual way he said it that made something click in Brad's brain. It didn't make sense, and yet it did. Nate did this for Ray, his lover; it did not automatically follow that he would do this for Brad, his close friend. Change that to his husband Ray and his husband Brad and it did. Ray cooked for Nate; he cooked for Brad. He got Nate a genuine first print edition of Pike's memoirs; he got Brad a functioning dirt bike and was helping him put it together. 

Also, there was an above-average amount of homoeroticism and flirting aimed his direction.. 

"Oh, fuck," Brad said. 

"What's wrong?" Nate asked. 

"I'm an idiot."

"Well, no fucking shit," Ray said. "I've told you that plenty of times. Did your Hebrew god finally send you some engraved tablets to give you a hint or something?"

Somehow, Brad had completely failed to notice that he really was married to them, even though it should have been obvious that was the only possible outcome of the entire ridiculous scheme.

That was the thing about Nate Fick, something that Brad first admired and then came to love: when he committed, he _committed_ with every fiber of his being. Brad should have realized that would apply here as much as anywhere else. Even if he'd genuinely meant to use marriage as a tool at the time, he was incapable of leaving it as that. He'd be perfectly content for their relationship to be purely platonic, but the lifelong partnership was there regardless.

Ray, well, Ray was like a cat to Nate's dog. He was fickle and finicky and given to acts of arbitrary drama, and sparing with his affections, but his loyalty was no less strong once given. The words and signatures had been a perfunctory acknowledgement that his devotion had been earned long before.

Maybe it was time Brad started to take things more seriously himself, or put an end to it before he hurt Nate and Ray both.


	7. Til I'm Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is further sappy behavior.

**USS Zephyr, Deep Space**  
Stardate 53329.2

A week after they'd departed the Carina system for the next stop on their patrol route, Nate met with Captain Yang for a regular status report on his department. He was starting to get used to her preference for smaller, more intimate meetings where his previous command would have been doing almost everything as a full staff. Presumably at some point she'd use that to tear a few strips off of him without embarrassing him in public, but the moment hadn't come yet.

"We should have the last few stragglers out of training by the end of the week," Nate said as he wrapped up his review of the training courses. "Some are going to be barely passing, but we've done what we can. I'm thinking after that we'll set up a schedule for more low-key ongoing practice sessions."

Yang nodded, setting the PADD he'd given her at the start of their one-on-one down on her desk. "And after that, the grand finale. Still think it's a good idea?"

"We did promise the crew that this would be all-inclusive," Nate said. "Fitzsimmons will be able to pass the obstacle course. I'm assured of this."

"And the other part of the competition? You don't think it's too uneven?"

"We'll be outnumbered by the other division and department leads something like six to one, ma'am."

"Given your record against the Jem'hadar," Yang said, "I have to wonder if you think I'm going to be dragging you and Master Sergeant Colbert down."

"Not at all, ma'am. I'm simply accounting for the fact that we're not allowed to stab, strangle, or explode any of them."

"I can see how that might restrict our options."

"Anything else, ma'am?"

"There are a couple other things. First, this new NCO you've requested for the security division position. He seems young for the job."

"So's Lt. zh'Ethret. He'll be a good fit. He always had an attitude that would have been better on a starship, and he has a lot of experience. If she's smart, she'll make use of that."

"You understand this ship is not Nate Fick's home for lost and wayward rangers, right? You can't recruit all of your favorites."

"I am aware, ma'am. Frankly, most of them wouldn't be caught dead on a starship anyways." Nate decided to play the ace up his sleeve. "Are you aware that he's dating a Michelin-starred chef? I understand she's very keen on the idea of a living on a starship and travelling from planet to planet, learning about new cuisine."

"I know when a lieutenant is trying to manage upwards, Mr. Fick."

"Just using every tool at my disposal, Captain."

"Alright, I look forward to meeting Sergeant Hasser."

"Thank you. You won't regret it."

"I better not." Yang gave him a look that he thought was mostly amused, but there was still some steel under the velvet exterior. "I've been thinking about our last two engagements, and your after-action reports."

"Do you have questions, ma'am?"

"A few. I've noticed you're quick to resort to the use of force. For example, on the freighter. You ordered Master Sergeant Colbert to use a stun grenade, despite the presence of civilians in the room. You said in your report that you judged that the least sufficient means to end the standoff."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What about the transporter? You could have beamed the pirates straight into the brig."

Nate considered that for a moment. "If we hadn't had access to the bridge, I would have done that rather than try to force entry. As it was, though, a properly calibrated grenade was unlikely to cause more than surface injuries and there was a surgeon present. Using the transporter would have required communicating with the ship, achieving lock-on, and then several seconds for the beam-out, leaving time for the situation to escalate. It was better to work with the tools immediately at hand."

"How long did it take you to decide that?"

"Four or five seconds, maybe? Once I decided to act. The conversation had been leading that way for a while."

"And four or five seconds is long enough to do that kind of cost-benefit analysis."

"It was the time I had. A lot of that knowledge is just something taught by experience and training. I knew the room size, the grenade type, Colbert's history using them. The solution was obvious."

"I understand. You don't consciously think out every move you make in a fight. At the same time, I don't think it's the choice ninety percent of security officers would have made. Not that quickly, at least."

Nated nodded and wryly said, "I think this is the first time in years that a superior's criticized me for being _overly_ aggressive."

Yang held up a hand. "Insofar as it's criticism at all, it's closer to the literary analysis sense. I want to understand your thought process. If I wanted to chastise or reprimand you, I'd have done it during our original after-action breakdown."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Moving on to the next incident, I won't question the merit of using surprise to overcome superior numbers. What about blowing up the tachyon weapon?"

"That I did have a couple minutes to think about, while Lt. Fitz worked and I spoke with Subcommander Telleria. Removing the device would have taken time and sparked a confrontation, but as soon as Ray had access to the ship's computer I was sure he'd get us the logs. It was better to have a partially successful retrieval and be sure of denying it to the Romulans, without causing a larger diplomatic problem."

"It did blow up in your face," Yang pointed out. "Literally."

"I will admit, ma'am, that I may need to make sure I understand what our technical experts mean by safe next time," Nate said with a chuckle. He sighed after a moment and decided to lay it out for her. "I've lived the last two years of my life in situations where acting decisively mattered more than acting in the most correct way possible. We planned, we trained, we considered options to the extent time allowed, but in the field it was usually a matter of acting now or acting never."

"Because if you hesitated, someone would die."

"People died when I didn't hesitate. Men under my command. People in other units. Civilians, more than once." Nate looked away from her and out at the stars streaking past. "Hesitating would have meant more died with them. I know that intellectually, but counterfactuals are cold comfort, especially since hindsight usually reveals better options."

"You and I, Nate, may be the only ones on the ship who understand that dilemma. Master Sergeant Colbert too. I'm sure he's made some of the same decisions."

"I tried to avoid putting that on him, but yeah." Nate would never forget the look on Brad's face when he had learned that Kocher had died on a patrol he'd sent out, or the cool he'd maintained in his voice while continuing to give out orders over the comms.

"Make no mistake, I value the ability to take decisive action in a crisis," Yang said. "But you're no longer commanding a few dozen men, or a hundred, out by themselves and with nothing to work with but, as you said, the tools immediately at hand. You're a member of starship crew. That expands your available resources - and expands the scope of scenarios that you will encounter. The events on the _Burnell_ are just a taste of the possibilities. You need to adapt your default assumptions to fit."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll keep that in mind."

She nodded. "Like I said, I'm not unhappy with your performance. In fact, your decision to negotiate with the Romulans is very satisfactory, even if there might be people back at Starfleet Command wishing you'd shot their commander instead. Knowing when to de-escalate and meet someone halfway is as important as knowing when violence should be your first resort."

"I don't want to be critical myself, ma'am," Nate said.

Yang raised her eyebrows. "But?"

"But despite our reputation, Rangers are trained for not just reconnaissance and raids, but also peacekeeping."

She cracked a smile. "A fair point, Nate. Somewhat undermined by the fact that I saw first hand that my Ops officer carries at least two knives at all times, but fair."

Nate relaxed a little, sensing the chance to change the topic to something less uncomfortable. "So that's going to happen, then?"

"Call it a trial run, until Starfleet gets around to actually sendings us one." Yang did not seem to think there was much chance of that happening anytime soon. "That'll be all. Dismissed. And please send my next appointment in."

Nate exited into the hallway, where Ray was lounging against the wall and chatting up the captain's yeoman in her cubby. Nate tapped him on the shoulder. "You're up."

"Any idea what she wants?" Ray asked.

"Not a clue. See you at lunch."

A couple hours later, Brad and Nate were waiting patiently in what passed for a secluded corner of the Aerie. Ray came stomping up with a tray with a greasy burger, chili cheese fries, and no sign of any vegetables. He pointedly refused to look at Nate, although when he turned to speak to Brad the striped bar insignia of a brevet lt. j.g. had replaced his warrant tag.

"Did you know about this?" Ray demanded.

"He's been pushing you for two years," Brad replied. "And not subtly, either."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Your mom will be happy. She always wanted you to be an officer."

"No one is going to tell my mom shit," at this point Ray did turn to Nate, "because this is temporary."

"You say that," Nate said, stealing a cheese fry, "but once you get a taste of power, you're not going back."

"I definitely am."

"Ray, I've never said this before, because I didn't want to make you feel bad," Nate said, reaching out to take his hand. "But I was always a little uncomfortable about the rank gap."

"Really?" Ray gave him a worried frown.

"Really. It was always weird fucking an enlisted man. It felt like I was slumming it, and the other lieutenants would talk behind my back about my scandalous behavior. Now maybe I can actually take you respectable places."

As Ray sputtered in outrage, Brad said, "Only if he's in uniform. Otherwise people are still going to assume he's an escort."

"Why the fuck do you assume," Ray demanded, "that people'd think _I_ was the rentboy? Have you seen him? Especially in civvies?"

"He has a point," Brad told Nate. "That time we were hiding out in that Orion caravanserai, I got several requests for both of you."

"I fucking well hope they were offering more for me," Ray muttered.

"I think the highest was as a matched set."

"Obviously, but singly?"

"Walt."

Ray shook his head. "Motherfucker. That boy ruins everything."

"I don't recall that part of the mission report," Nate said. 

"The current hourly rate for high-end sex workers on Abadan III didn't seem relevant," Brad said. "And I did mention at the time that I'd had a chat with the local union to smooth things over."

"I thought that was about acquiring lodging."

"No, they were threatening to break my legs if I wasn't charging enough or passing on your share. They threw in the beds after realizing we were there to fuck up the Cardies."

This conversation was starting to explore strange new territory, and Nate wasn't sure if he should be amused or wishing he'd never started it. "On second thought, maybe some things are best left forgotten."

Brad's expression took on an unusually uncertain look. "Actually. Since we're on the topic of traditional exchanges for sex."

"Homes, if you razzed me about accepting food and drink from the colonists we saved, you better not have gotten any other favors."

"As it happens, Ray, while I did receive a number of subtle and not-so-subtle offers, as I was on duty I was professional enough to decline them.

"A number? Uh huh. That's definitely a thing that happened, just like that time Walt was so great in bed that three whores gave him the night for free."

"You're the one who made that story up in the first place."

"Someone had to protect his reputation, because he sure as a fuck wasn't." 

"Brad," Nate said, "you were trying to say something?"

"Thank you," Brad said, shooting him a relieved glance. "It's occurred to me that there's been a serious lapse in procedure aboard this ship."

"Uh oh," Ray said. "What is it this time? Are people reporting to the wrong escape pods during drills? Pissing in the gym showers? Tracking dirt out of the arboretum?"

"It was thinking more between the three of us."

"So it's about him pissing in your shower," Nate said. 

"Ray," Brad said.

Ray blinked innocently. "Yes, my sun, moon, and stars?"

"Stay the fuck out of my bathroom."

"Hey, sometimes he's already using our shower and we can't share because we'd get distracted fucking. I promise, no bodily fluids are staining your precious fixtures."

Brad closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly released it. "I'm not making a mistake," he murmured, "or if I am, it was made years ago."

"Is this one of those moments where you're reconsidering our friendship?"

In response, Brad pulled a small case from his pocket and sat it on the table. When opened it revealed three rings.

"I understand this is still tradition on Earth, especially the backwoods parts full of flea-ridden mutts," Brad said, handing one to each of them and keeping the last. "Having noticed that in our haste to get the formalities completed we skipped this step, I thought I should rectify that."

They were thin bands of golden material, with some sort of micro-engraved with silver filigree and what looked like their names and a series of stardates. The only visible difference was a small gemstone set inside each: a diamond for Nate, ruby for Ray, and sapphire for Brad.

"And you say I'm a nerd," Nate murmured. It felt a little weird in his hand, slightly squishy, and it stretched minutely as he slid it onto his finger.

"I don't know what you mean," Brad replied. "The material's a carbon silicate composite with a metallic suspension in it. If it gets caught in something it should tear before your skin or tendons do. It's also non-conductive."

"Where'd you get them?"

"Chief Roimata down in fabrication does metalwork and lapidary as a hobby. I asked her to make them a while ago." Brad cleared his throat. "I know this marriage thing doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to you two. I don't know if it ever will, or if we'd even want it to. But I thought it was important that you know it _does_ have value and meaning to me."

Nate wasn't entirely sure what Brad was trying to express with this gesture, and he didn't think Brad fully knew himself. The fact that he was making it all was moving. Brad was fully capable of showing compassion, caring, and all those other squishy human emotions. He just had trouble doing it directly to anyone over the age of about twelve. He'd praise you behind your back when you were just in earshot and then insult you to your face, or show up with a joke and shower wand when you were feeling disgustingly grimy. Giving out rings might as well be skywriting a declaration of love by his standards.

"As always, I rely on you to correct my oversights," Nate said gravely. He added in Vulcan, "Your display of affection is both logical and pleasing to me." 

Brad snorted. "Your accent still needs work."

Nate looked over at Ray, who was strangely silent. He was turning the ring over and over between his thumb and index fingers. His eyes were watering up, no doubt because the super-strength tabasco on his sandwich was getting to him. 

"You okay?" Brad asked, his hesitance as odd as Ray's quiet.

"Yeah, just give me a second," Ray said, blinking a few times. He slipped his ring on and smiled. "Right. I'm good. Brad, what's the trick to killing someone with this?"

"There isn't one," Brad said slowly. "What sort of rings do they exchange in the hellscape you call home?"

"I'm just saying, it's not like you to give out gifts with no tactical value. Even those Tarkellian wool sweaters you gave us for Hanukkah had, quote, excellent thermal and waterproofing qualities."

Brad got a little shifty-eyed at that, to an almost Ray-like level. "Brad?" Nate prompted.

"They are laced with a ytterbium-based compound that responds to certain subspace frequencies," Brad admitted. "If you pinged them, they'd act like passive locator beacons."

"That actually makes me feel much better," Ray said. "If this were purely a sappy gesture with no practical function, I might think you'd been replaced with an alternate reality duplicate or something. Hey, if I'm an officer, does that mean I can grow a beard now?"

"Absolutely not," Nate replied.

"Fleeties do it all the time. They're not as paranoid about CBRN attacks."

"I don't care about that, I care about not getting beard burn on my ass."

"Are you even capable of growing an actual beard?" Brad asked. 

"Of course I can. You're just jealous because your whiskers blend in with your skin."

"I think you'll find that they don't."

Nate could already tell this was going to end up with both of them looking like shipwreck victims if they were left to their own devices. "Maybe I should do it too, then."

They both looked at him skeptically. Brad started, "Sir."

"Nate," Ray said.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Remember when we couldn't shave on Ailios?"

"Everyone or no one, gentlemen," Nate said. "If I'm shaving so are you."

Apparently the threat of the alternative was enough to quiet them down. Honestly, while it was true they could both pull off the look very well, Nate liked to think his own scruff wasn't as bad as their overly dramatic reactions implied. If anything, he helped make him look a little more respectable and mature. 

Whatever. Charming, boyish innocence was apparently his lot in life. It was also a weapon Nate could wield as effectively as a phaser or blade. 

"Brad, do you have plans tonight?" Nate asked.

"My social calendar is jammed packed, but it's possible I can squeeze something in between dinner with the fishing club and tonight's interdepartmental kadiskot championship."

"I'll take that as a 'no'."

"It's a starship, sir. My options for activities are limited, especially since you insist that I not abuse my holodeck scheduling authority."

"Join us for date night?"

"I've observed your regular evening activities for months. I have yet to determine any meaningful difference between 'date night' and the random bullshit you get up to. The only thing I can think of is that afterwards you must be doing something spectacularly kinky behind closed doors, and frankly I'm not sure I'm up to being exposed to whatever is so twisted that even Ray feels the need to hide his shame where no one else can see it."

"Brad," Ray interjected, "it's very important to have designated romantic time in your relationship in addition to everyday and spontaneous activities. I read it in the manual."

"Your read it in the manual," Brad repeated. 

"Nate read it in a book."

"That I find much more believable, given that you've never met a manual that you didn't reject in favor of whatever fever dreams pop out of the putrifying lump of lard you call a brain."

"2000 hours, our quarters," Nate said.

"Where else would I be at that time of night?"

"Working on your bike while I'm not there, probably," Ray said. "I feel like I shouldn't need to remind you that the entire point of a bonding exercise is that it's between more than one person."

"I'm not sure I want to bond with someone who can't be punctual."

That set off a round of squabbling about who was and was not responsible for a missed playdate that lasted through most of lunch. At precisely 2000 that evening, Brad relocated from where he was writing up training evaluations at the dining table and into the living room. He took a moment to observe them sitting together on the couch, with Nate to one side and Ray in the middle, looked at the large holographic "STANDBY" floating by the wall opposite them, and started walking toward his usual recliner where it sat off to the side.

"Hey, hey, no, not over there, we've got one bowl of popcorn for a reason," Ray said. One extremely large bowl fluorescent green bowl that Ray had pulled out of a storage bin. He'd needed to order several smaller containers of popcorn to fill it, because it was too large to fit in replicator. Ray patted the open spot on the couch to his left. "Sit down."

"I may be participating in date night," Brad replied, "but it does not mean that I'm going to let you get all handsy under the cover of darkness."

"Brad, he's suggesting you sit on the same couch," Nate said. "He's not inviting you into our bed."

"You know how he is," Brad said. "You give him one inch and -"

"The next thing you know he'll want all eight," Ray finished, wiggling his eyebrows. "But hey, I'm patient, I understand the importance of boundaries, I'm not going to push against your rule against hanky-panky on the ship. No promises about next leave."

"You have never met a boundary that you didn't push against in your relentlessly reflexive contrarianism."

"We've literally spent a night huddled together to share warmth, and I didn't jump your bones then."

"There were ten other people in that pile, and even you can't get it up when it's so cold your balls have retracted clear to your stomach."

"Brad," Nate said, "have you ever considered that you have a stubborn contrarian streak yourself?"

"Have you?"

"It's come up in a performance review or two. Sit down so we can get this movie started before the popcorn gets cold and stale."

"I feel like I'm being emotionally blackmailed," Brad grumbled as he finally relented and joined them on the couch. He let out a sigh as Ray immediately leaned against him. "And physically assaulted."

"You are such a fucking drama queen," Ray said happily. "Computer, dim the lights and begin playback before this fickle fucker flees."

As the room went dark and a screen materialized before them, Brad looked past Ray at Nate. "Please tell me this was at least something you chose."

Nate shook his head. "It was Ray's night. Come back in two weeks if you'd like something more modern."

"Wonderful."

"Come on, this isn't even one that I chose for the cheese value," Ray said. "It's about a traditional folk hero in post-apocalyptic Australia. My gran loves it, she says it's surprisingly accurate for something produced in the 2010s."

"I understand your theocratic sinkhole of a state bans the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic," Brad said, "but I'd like to think that someone mentioned what year the third world war took place in during your schooling."

"I've always preferred the 'Third Thirty-Years War' framing," Nate said. "Trying to narrow it down to just the final NATO-ECON exchange in 2053 is too limiting."

"Honestly, I've never been clear on when the Eugenics Wars started," Ray said. "Like, someone told me the nineteen-nineties once, but you'd think it would have come up in pop culture more often."

"Some people count from the creation of the first augments," Nate replied, "but that's terrible and outdated historiography."

"Please tell me that I'm not married to people who talk in the theater," Brad said. Deep, angry string instruments began to play. 

"It's not a theater, homes, but I'll shut up if you agree to snuggle."

In a very deliberate manner, Brad scooted over slightly, then put his arm behind Ray's neck so that his hand rested on Nate's shoulder. Ray made a contented noise and started shoveling handfuls of popcorn into his mouth. There were a few minutes of comfortable cuddling in silence as the film's opening sequence began.

"Ray," Brad said suddenly, "if I see your fingers go inside your cockholster and then into the bowl one more time, I'm going to snap them off and shove them down your throat."

"Please don't," Nate said. "I need those intact for later tonight."

"Since you ask nicely, I'll refrain."

"Fuyubof," Ray muttered around the disgusting buttery mass in his mouth. 

Objectively speaking, it was no different than dozens of other activities they've done together. They'd even done the "squeezed into a small space while indulging Ray's historical film fetish" thing before. It felt different, though, to have Brad making these small displays of affection without the usual smokescreens of duty, obligation, and tactical efficiency. Nate had no idea what the next steps here might look like, but he hoped they would include Brad allowing himself to just be happy without needing specific excuses for doing so. 

In fact, Nate himself was starting to feel genuinely optimistic for the first time in years.


End file.
